


it's not living (if it's not with you)

by dreamweavernyx



Category: The Half of It (2020)
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Ellie-centric, F/F, Post-Canon, a host of female OCs but they're all lovely, copious mentions of food, erratic timelines, paul munsky is the Best Bro, rated T for some frank discussion of religion and sexuality, the endgame is ellie/aster don't y'all worry, the lesbian-himbo broship we all needed, the story of ellie chu - disaster lesbian - going to college and discovering herself, the working title of this fic is just op's love letter to food
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:00:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24769675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamweavernyx/pseuds/dreamweavernyx
Summary: Before Ellie finds love, she learns that she needs to find herself, first. Vignettes of Ellie navigating through college and adulthood, finding friendship, love, and self-confidence.~Her room at Smith Hall is on the top floor, the ceiling slanted to accommodate the roof, with two desks crammed at one end and two bare mattresses squished up against the window on the opposite end. It’s tiny, it’s cramped, and Ellie, unbidden, remembers her own little attic room, and a part of her relaxes at the familiar memory juxtaposed over this cold, unfamiliar room.She breathes in, breathes out. Okay, she thinks. You’ve got this, Ellie.
Relationships: Ellie Chu/Aster Flores, Ellie Chu/Original Character(s)
Comments: 31
Kudos: 131





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title and theme song for this fic: [It's Not Living (If It's Not With You) by The 1975](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bVJFgvUZHg). ~~yes i know its a heroin song but it has good vibes, okay~~
> 
> Many thanks as ever to the lovely irrationaljasmine for helping to review this story in bits and pieces, putting up with my numerous bouts of writer's block, and being the most encouraging beta one could ask for.

Grinnell, Ellie thinks as she walks up the steps of Smith Hall for the first time, is nothing like what she’s imagined. _Sure_ , she’d known it would be a big city, known that it would be more lively, more diverse, more vibrant than little old Squahamish, but it’s one thing to know it’ll be different, and quite another to _experience_ how different it is. There’s wide swathes of green everywhere, framing tall red-brick buildings set with shining glass windows, and wide, flat roads free of the crunch of tyre-on-gravel that she’s grown up listening to back home.

Even just dragging her possessions up to the residential hall, she’s had to veer out of the way of five different cyclists, and she thinks of the clunky old bicycle she’d left behind in Squahamish, which had served her well all through middle and high school. A small part of her wonders if the air is different here in the city, whether it’ll feel different when it rustles through her clothes and messes up her hair.

There’s a Mandarin saying, “ _jing di zhi wa_ ”, which translates to “the frog who lives in the bottom of the well”. Ellie remembers her Ba telling her the story of a frog who lived in the bottom of a small well, and had thought that was all the world contained – just a small circle of water below him, and a small circle of sky above. One day, a sea turtle came by the well, and the frog boasted to it about its home, inviting the turtle to come inside. The turtle, unable to fit in the well, had asked the frog to come out instead. When the frog stepped out of his well, he was taken aback and amazed by how vast the world outside his well was.

Coming to Iowa, Ellie thinks, makes her feel a little like a frog stepping out of her well for the first time, realising the world is a lot bigger than the small town that’s been all she’s ever known.

Her room at Smith Hall is on the top floor, the ceiling slanted to accommodate the roof, with two desks crammed at one end and two bare mattresses squished up against the window on the opposite end. It’s tiny, it’s cramped, and Ellie, unbidden, remembers her own little attic room, and a part of her relaxes at the familiar memory juxtaposed over this cold, unfamiliar room.

She breathes in, breathes out. _Okay,_ she thinks. _You’ve got this, Ellie._

Her roommate hasn’t moved in yet, so she picks the bed further from the door and sets down her bags. She’s got a ton of unpacking to do, but her hands go straight for the small pocket at the top of her backpack, where she’d carefully placed little trinkets from home. She pulls them out now, one by one, and carefully lines them up along the shelf above the desk. Her desk.

A faded photograph of her with her Ba and Ma, from when she must have been around two or three, smiling shyly with chocolate stains all over her hands. A newer photograph from high school graduation, just her and Ba grinning at the camera, a half-blurred Paul behind them attempting a photobomb (and not really succeeding; Mrs Munsky’d pressed the shutter too late). A half-dented ping pong ball, from the first time she’d tried to have ‘conversation practice’ with Paul (he’d pressed it into her hand right before she got on the train – “ _ball of ULTIMATE friendship!!!!_ ” is written on it in messy ink).

She rocks back on her heels and examines the display with satisfaction, takes a photo on her phone. There are already four texts from Paul (two of which are purely emojis with no text) since the last time she’d checked her phone. _have u reached??_ says the most recent one, sent fifteen minutes ago.

She sends the photo to him. _Settling in_ , she types, and almost instantly he responds with three exclamation marks, a one-hundred emoji, and another emoji of two ladies dancing; and despite herself Ellie snorts.

There’s voices coming down the hallway now, two female ones and a lower, male one. “-And this is my room, _amma_ ,” Ellie hears. “The school assigns us a roommate- Oh!”

There’s an Indian girl standing in the doorway in jeans and a faded My Chemical Romance t-shirt, two adults who Ellie assumes are her parents behind her each wheeling a massive suitcase.

“Hi!” says the girl. Her smile is bright, almost as though there’s a miniature sun inside of her, yearning to burst out. “You must be my roommate.”

“Um,” says Ellie, caught off-guard. “I’m Ellie Chu. I, uh, hope you don’t mind that I started setting up.”

“Oh, not at all! I’m Priya, it’s so good to meet you! I hope we can be good friends.” All of this is said at top speed, as the girl takes over both the suitcases and turns to her parents, still talking: “See, _appa, amma,_ my roommate’s here already, I’ll be okay setting up by myself.”

The older woman, wrapped in a jewel-toned length of silk that Ellie’s pretty sure is called a _sari_ , looks worried, but the man nods and pats her arm. “Make sure to call-”

“-Every Friday, yes, loveyoubye!” says Priya, nonchalantly reaching for the door as her parents give her one last hug and leave. The moment the door closes, Ellie sees Priya’s shoulders relax a little.

“Sorry about that,” she says wryly, turning back to Ellie. “My parents can be a little, uh, over-involved. I’m not from here, so they’re constantly worrying about me being here all by myself, but I’m a big girl, you know? I’d like to think I can take care of myself.”

Ellie’s been taking care of herself since she was thirteen, but she understands the feeling of wanting to just get out and do something different, so she nods and smiles. There’s an easy, warm energy to Priya, and even though Ellie’s privately always thought of herself as not warming up easily to people she finds herself relaxing even as Priya begins to chatter on, like a flower turning to the sun.

_Perhaps_ , she thinks, _college life won’t be so bad, after all._

~

In those romantic-comedy movies where the characters are in college, the trope always seems to be that one can make it through college as long as they have an ample supply of cup ramen. But, Ellie thinks, a couple of months into the first semester of college, those movies were clearly written by white people who hadn't encountered the wonders of an Asian supermarket.

If anyone were to ask Ellie, she’d set them straight: one can make it through college as long as they have soy sauce and sesame oil. So of course, that’s the first thing Ellie decides her new dorm room needs.

As it turns out, Google Maps says that the closest Asian supermarket to Smith Hall is at least half an hour away, but that first weekend in dorm, she and Priya are drowning in introductory coursework and homesickness, and their brains are endlessly searching for some sort of escape. Looking across the room at each other, they come to a single, ill-advised idea, one born of two broke students with neither a car nor a driving licence: they’re going to bike to the Asian supermarket and make themselves comfort food.

It’s good weather, thankfully, end of summer turning to late fall, but though the cycle _to_ the supermarket is enjoyable, the two of them soon discover that trying to cycle _back_ while carrying enough soy sauce, sesame oil, garam masala and cumin powder to feed a large army is a trial and a half.

“You’re crazy,” says a senior they run into in the stairway back at Smith Hall, each of them panting over a backpack stuffed full of the precious, precious glass bottles. She’s got black hair cropped short, the ends dyed pink, and her tone is half-admiring, half-disbelieving.

“Well, we’re not going to make that cycle every week, so we needed to stock up,” Ellie defends breathlessly – her lungs, while used to long cycles, are not used to cycling with _weights_ on her back. She’s almost starting to think this was a terrible idea, the guilt of her half-written homework sitting on her desk rising up, but then her mind conjures up the thought of plain noodles with minced pork tossed in soy sauce, and the guilt fades.

The senior snorts.

“Looks like you bought enough for two years at Grinnell, that’s what you did,” she says, dryly. “Look. I’ve got a car. It’s banged up and the air conditioning’s kind of shitty, but you can fit two coolers in the trunk and all your shopping in the back seat. I go to the Asian supermarket twice a month – I’ve got enough space for two crazy freshmen if they want to buy groceries too.”

Ellie learns the senior’s name is Rebecca Yamamura, third-year physics major, and she stays in a double room on the second floor. Rebecca’s effortlessly cool and confident in herself in a way Ellie wonders if she’ll ever manage, fitting in seamlessly with the other students at Grinnell and also entirely at ease with her Asian identity. _Maybe_ , Ellie thinks, _I’ll be like that someday_.

Rebecca teaches them how to make _inarizushi_ one weekend, patiently waiting for the sputtering rice-cooker in Smith Hall’s only kitchen to cook the sushi rice that they’d combed the shelves of the supermarket for, while Ellie helps to drain the _abura-age_ tofu pouches which had been simmering in a mixture of soy sauce and miso paste.

“It’s nice to make food with others,” Ellie admits, quietly. “I used to make dumplings at home with my dad all the time. We wouldn’t say anything to each other, but there was a certain comfort in creating something together.”

“Food brings people together,” says Priya, with a smile, absently playing with a half-empty bottle of sesame seeds Rebecca had dug out from the depths of her dorm room, one eye on the rice-cooker. “One day I’ll find a store that sells _paneer_ cheese, and I’ll teach you guys how to make _chapatti_ and _palak paneer_ like my _amma_ does.”

Ellie, having already heard Priya wax poetic about her _amma_ ’s _palak paneer_ – a spinach puree served with firm chunks of fresh cheese – three to four times at this point, says nothing, though the warmth in Priya’s voice makes her smile.

They’re interrupted by the beeping of the rice-cooker, and the next five minutes are spent frantically microwaving the sushi vinegar they’d forgotten to heat up, mixing it with sugar and salt, and stirring it through the rice before it cools. They end up with bits of rice stuck all over their fingers and clothes as Rebecca tries valiantly to teach them how to stuff the _abura-age_ pockets full of rice, but at the end of it all they manage to produce a plate full of glossy brown _inarizushi_ stuffed full of rice and topped with sesame seeds.

It’s Ellie’s first time eating sushi that isn't the cheap packaged kind from the refrigerated section of the Asian supermarket, and the first bite of rice warms her from her belly down to her toes, makes her almost feel like she’s eating handmade dumplings in front of the TV with her Ba.

She doesn’t realise she’s closed her eyes in satisfaction until she opens them again to see Rebecca smiling at her knowingly.

“It feels like home,” says Ellie, because home might be shaky power connections and _lu rou fan_ and old black-and-white movies, but home is also two or three pairs of hands quietly working to make food together side-by-side at the same kitchen counter, and Rebecca laughs.

“Yes,” she says. “I know.”

~

“You’re not coming back for summer break?”

Paul’s voice is tinny through her laptop speakers, but Ellie can still hear the disappointment, see the sad puppy eyes he’s giving through the 240p video that she’s got on her screen courtesy of spotty dorm wifi. It’s snowing today, an early December morning, and Priya’s already rolled out of bed in three layers of sweaters to go for a morning lecture, so Ellie’s alone in the room.

“I don’t know for sure,” she says. “It’s still early. But look, I found a little bookstore just down the street that’s been looking for part-time hires through the summer, and they pay pretty decently. And I hear there are always students who live in the apartments in town who want someone to plant-sit for them while they’re home for summer break, and they let you stay in their house for free in exchange. It’s an option, you know?”

Paul wilts further. “I guess I get it,” he says. “Gonna be real lonely without you here, though.”

Despite herself, Ellie smiles. “I see you on Skype every week, you sap. Come on, tell me what you and Ba made this week.”

As with any mention of cooking or Edwin Chu, this immediately perks Paul up. “This week we made beef noodle soup! Mr Chu said the recipe was originally for lamb soup, but nowhere in Squahamish sells lamb, so apparently he’s been making it with beef ever since you guys came out here. We made like a _ton_ of soup and froze it all, so we’ll be having soup for another two months, I think. I brought some back home and there was still enough to entirely fill out your freezer.”

“Did your mom like it?”

Paul shrugs. “It’s free food.”

“…Good point.”

“Mr Chu taught me to make noodles, too,” Paul continues, gesturing animatedly. “Making noodles is real fun, Ellie. You just pull them real long and smack them on the table, and they stretch _forever_.”

Ellie remembers childhood, learning to pull noodles from her Ma, always breaking the dough too early and ending up with thick sausages of dough instead of the thin, flat noodles that her Ma could create. “Not bad,” she says. “You’re already better at noodle-making than me, if you managed to create a noodle.”

Paul looks inordinately pleased with himself, like ‘Beat Ellie Chu at Noodle-Making’ was a Girl Guides patch and he’d just earned one. “I wonder if beef noodle soup sausage-”

“Paul. No.”

“Do you _know_ how many spices go into the soup, Ellie? Put it into sausage, and boom, flavourtown!”

Ellie groans. (She doesn’t know why she still tries.) “Just,” she says, resignedly, “don’t call it beef noodle soup sausage. It’s too much of a mouthful.”

“But isn’t that what I want, for people to take mouthfuls of it-”

“It’s too long of a name, nobody’s going to take mouthfuls of something which name they can’t remember,” she says, but she’s grinning. It’s strange, she thinks. There’s always been so little in common between her and Paul, but somehow they’ve clicked in a way that Ellie has thus far been unable to replicate at Grinnell. Sure, Priya is a sweetheart (if a little bit of a drama queen), and Rebecca their Cool Mom Friend, but there’s nothing like coming back on a weekend to Paul impatiently waiting on Skype, feeling her shoulders relax as he starts talking to her about his weekly sausage-related exploits.

(There’s someone else that Ellie once felt like could just _get_ her, someone with whom talking was always easy. She’s slightly ashamed to admit that she’s thought of Aster Flores a lot in these first few months in college, always in the wee hours of the morning when she’s labouring over an essay, or when she reads a line in a coursebook that resonates with her, and she finds herself wondering what Aster might think. But she remembers hurt brown eyes in a crowded church, the sound of a slap fresh in the air, the promise of two girls still struggling to find themselves. She does not reach for her GhostMessenger.)

“Mum’s invited your dad over for Christmas,” says Paul suddenly, changing the topic and startling Ellie out of her reverie. “Said it would be lonely if he was by himself, and that it’s the least she could do.”

“We’ve never really celebrated Christmas,” Ellie replies, shrugging. “The Lunar New Year to us was always the big holiday of the year.”

“Mr Chu says you get money from adults on the Lunar New Year,” says Paul. “That’s real dope. Why can’t Christmas be like that? Free money!”

Ellie laughs; she’ll bet anything that her Ba has already made plans to give Paul a red packet of his own this coming Lunar New Year. His initially awkward relationship with her first proper friend seems to have morphed into something more comfortable in her absence, and Ellie reckons (from what she sees during the fortnightly Chu family Skypes with Paul and her Ba) that Paul’s effectively been adopted as the second child of the Chu family, in all but name.

Indeed, two months later as winter stands poised to turn into spring, Ellie wakes to five text messages from Paul, the latest of which goes _OMG I GOT NEW YR MONEY!!!!_ with five dollar-note emojis. As she blearily unlocks her phone, a sixth message comes in: _also happy luna new yr!!!!! hope ur SURPRISE arrives on time :)_

_??_ , she types back. (She’s getting better at emulating Paul’s style of texting; perhaps not a development for the best.)

Almost as though on cue, there’s a knock on her door. “Chu,” calls a voice through the door, and it sounds almost like Rebecca. “Are you expecting a package today? There’s an impatient-looking UPS guy downstairs, and he’s holding a huge box with your name on it.”

Ellie blinks once, twice, and then she’s scrambling to pull her hoodie on over the long-sleeved t-shirt and sweats she’d slept in last night, shoving her feet into warm slippers and heading out of the room. The person outside her room is indeed Rebecca, who goes down with her and helps her to haul the box back up the stairs. It’s a box about the size of a drink cooler, made of thick Styrofoam and (oddly) very cold. _CAUTION_ , reads a label on one side of the box, _DRY ICE._

There’s also an envelope taped to the box very securely, and it takes Ellie a couple of minutes to slide her penknife through all five layers of tape holding the envelope to the Styrofoam. On the back, she recognises her Ba’s elegant flowing Mandarin penmanship (in ballpoint pen). _Nian nian you yu_ , it says, and _xin nian kuai le_ : Happy New Year, and may your years be filled with abundance. It’s a traditional greeting, and Ellie’s fingers tremble as she uses the penknife to slit open the envelope. Inside, there’s a red paper packet saying that this year’s New Year money will be Venmo-ed to her – sensible, Ellie thinks, because sending actual money by UPS seems like a terrible idea.

There’s another note in much messier, much shakier Mandarin penmanship. This one just says _xin nian_ , and it’s accompanied by a quick note at the bottom in English: _I learned to write this!!!!! – Paul_

Ellie smiles to herself, and turns her attention back to the massive Styrofoam box. There’s another number of layers of tape around this box, though there are vents left open in order to allow carbon dioxide to escape; the last of the cool air puffs out as Ellie opens the box to reveal… sandwich bags. There’s a number of sandwich bags full of frozen dumplings, and others which are labelled _five spice sausage_. Sitting right on top is a single bag labelled _beef noodle soup sausage of AWESOME_.

It’s her first Lunar New Year on her own, away from her family during a holiday traditionally meant to be spent with family, but Ellie’s sat on the floor of her dorm room with a box full of flavours from home, surrounded by the love from her Ba and her best friend from miles and miles away.

She has five-spice sausage for dinner that night, and the blend of the spices is like running into an old friend, warm and familiar.

~

Priya catches wind of a garage sale one weekend close to finals – one of the art major seniors from Younker Hall is selling off the stuff from their dorm room – and immediately decides that they should go check it out.

Ellie looks up from the dog-eared copy of _Twelfth Night_ that she’s filled to bursting with post-its that she’s re-annotating as revision for Intro to Shakespeare, and makes the mistake of meeting Priya’s pleading puppy-dog eyes.

“Fine,” she sighs, caving like a piece of wet tissue paper, “let’s go.”

They walk into utter chaos. The senior’s selling pretty much everything in their dorm room for cheap, and the place is filled with pajama-clad students looking for a good deal. Priya immediately wanders off towards where an eclectic collection of furniture and houseplants have been sent out, muttering under her breath about beanbags, but Ellie stays where she is near the door.

A splash of colour catches her eye and she turns, to see a small canvas hanging loosely on a nail hammered into the wall. It’s a riot of colour, coils of turquoise and sea-green and white dotted with flecks of gold paint, and Ellie’s so caught up in the energy behind the frenetic brushstrokes that it takes a while for her to realise that it's a painting of the sea. She loses herself in the twists and turns of the paint, feels almost breathless even as the calm blue of the palette pulls her into a semi-trance.

“See something you like?” she hears a voice behind her say, and she jumps, turns around to see an older boy in a beanie and a paint-stained tee. He laughs.

“Didn’t mean to startle you,” he says. “I’m Rafael, and you’re probably here for the garage sale I’m running out of my room.”

“I’m mostly here for my roommate, really,” she says dryly. “You painted this?”

“Painted it for the student exhibition this year, but decided not to submit it in the end, so it’s just been bumming around on my wall.”

“I like the energy,” she says slowly, trying to find the words to describe how the piece makes her feel. “The brushstrokes, they’re wild and yet controlled. It’s… it’s almost like the essence of the sea itself, straining to escape the confines of paint and canvas.”

Rafael blinks once, twice, and his mouth curves into a wry smile. “Not too simplistic a piece of art for you?”

Ellie shrugs. “I’m not an art major.”

“You don’t have to be an art major to appreciate art,” he says in return. Pauses, then: “You should have it.”

“…What?”

“The painting,” clarifies Rafael. “Since you like it, and all. I’ll be happy knowing that it’s in hands that appreciate it, rather than wrapped in bubble-wrap in a cardboard box somewhere when I head home.”

“Uh,” says Ellie, rapidly trying to mentally calculate how much an art piece would cost, and how much it might take out of her weekly budget. Rafael rolls his eyes, and picks the painting off the wall, holds it out to her. “It’s a gift,” he says, uncannily predicting the cause of Ellie’s hesitance.

“I’m not about to take art for free,” Ellie protests. “Art deserves to be paid for.”

“I’ve had the piece hanging in studio and in my room for close to half a year, and nobody’s reacted to it like you have,” says Rafael. “That’s more than enough payment for me.”

Later, back in their room, Ellie watches as Priya putters around the room, looking for somewhere to place the giant monstera plant she’d managed to snag from Rafael’s apartment. She’s still got Rafael’s painting in her hands, the canvas about the size of a notebook. Impulsively, she takes a photo of it and sends it to Paul.

_pretty!!_ comes the reply, followed by, _wait did u mean to send that to aster._

_??_ , she replies.

_u know_ , Paul types, _ur special painting friend_ , followed by four winking emojis.

Ellie snorts. _I’ll have you know I haven't texted Aster since I left Squahamish, Munsky._ ( _I haven’t texted her because I have too many things I want to say to her and I don’t know what to say first_ , she carefully doesn’t say.)

_shes having tons of fun at art school, according to instagram :P_

_…_ , she types.

_……_ , he responds, and she grins despite herself.

_………………._ , she types back.

_UGH FINE_ , he says, and Ellie snorts. _it’s real pretty tho i bet aster would like it is all im sayin_ , he continues, followed by the caterpillar emoji with glasses.

Ellie looks down at the painting again, at the swirling maelstrom of bold brushstrokes at its centre. _Hm,_ she types back. _Maybe._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic was intended to be a oneshot that i started during my country's covid-19 lockdown, but it's grown too long for me to feasibly finish in good time so i'll be posting it up in chapters instead. work's picking up now that my country's lifted its lockdown so i'm not sure when i'll be able to finish the fic, but i've already got enough pre-written content for a couple more chapters, so look out for those soon!!
> 
> the chinese proverb jing di zhi wa (井底之蛙) that ellie refers to at the start is a well-known proverb usually used to refer to people who are ignorant / have a narrow worldview; it can be used with negative connotations. a brief writeup of the history of the proverb can be found [here](http://chinesepowerup.com/jing-di-zhi-wa/).
> 
> grinnell appears to have a generally mandatory [roommate policy](https://www.grinnell.edu/about/offices-services/residence-life/room-draw/roommates) for at least the first two years. ellie's hall, smith hall, [looks like this](https://www.grinnell.edu/spaces/smith-hall).
> 
> there's a good list of the various majors which grinnell offers [here](https://www.grinnell.edu/academics/majors-concentrations?is_major=1&is_concentration=All&programs=edit-is-major) \- i've chosen to have ellie major in english.
> 
> it's possible to ship frozen food cross-country, though it is heavily recommended that you [use dry ice if you do so](https://traveltips.usatoday.com/mail-frozen-refrigerated-food-61211.html)!!
> 
> xuzhou, the region in china where ellie is from, is [famous for mutton soup](http://www.jiangsutravel.us/xuzhou-mutton-soup). however, having never lived in a small town in the US, i'm not entirely sure if mutton would be available, so i'd swapped to beef for the purposes of mr chu's recipe. some chinese people don't eat beef for religious reasons (mainly buddhists), but as the chu family appears to be non-religious beef should be okay.
> 
> inarizushi is japanese sushi rice wrapped in pouches of deep-fried beancurd skin; i followed [this recipe](https://www.chopstickchronicles.com/inari-sushi/) for it.


	2. Chapter 2

Ellie spends her first summer away from home in a little bookstore, surrounded by the smell of paperbacks and the quiet rustle of pages. The owner is a little old woman who lives in the apartment above the store, and she hires college students to work for her so that she doesn’t have to sit at the front desk all day – “It’s bad for my back,” she’d told Ellie on her first day.

Ellie doesn’t mind. The store’s pretty quiet most of the time, and she happily spends her days sat on the lone stool behind the front desk, nose in a book, making use of the bookstore as her very own personal library. On the third week, she discovers on a back shelf a collection of works by Kazuo Ishiguro. Trailing her hand over the spines, her fingers hesitate for a beat over _The Remains of the Day_ , and she burns with the itch to re-read the book.

She tears her gaze away and pulls out the next book instead – _Never Let Me Go_ – and brings that with her back to the front desk. _It won’t do_ , she thinks, _to just read the same book over and over._

_Never Let Me Go_ turns out to be a fantastic read, an aching tale of loss and death and grief, and Ellie reads the entire book three times through before she’s able to put it down. Before she’s consciously thinking about what her hands are doing, they’re already typing on her phone: _do you ever wish you could have had more time?_

She looks down at the screen, and only does she realise that she’s typed into the GhostMessenger chat window she has with DiegoRivera, pretty much on autopilot, as though they were back in high school, senior year. But she’s no longer ghostwriting for Paul, and she still doesn't know where she stands with Aster, isn’t sure if she can act as though the camaraderie between SmithCorona and DiegoRivera was something real.

She deletes the message instantly before she can do something stupid like send it.

~

Sophomore year comes with more coursework, more readings, and a Priya who seems to have fallen into a teenage rebellious phase a little late. Their first day back in the dorm, Ellie walks into their room to see a girl with curly hair cropped into a pixie cut and three piercings on each earlobe, and it isn’t until the girl turns and cries “If it isn’t my favourite Chinese girl!” that Ellie realises this stranger is Priya.

“I like the haircut,” she says in lieu of a reply, and Priya grins. Priya had had long, braided hair all through their first year, and Ellie thinks that she looks lighter now, as though a weight had been taken off not just her scalp, but also her shoulders.

“I’m trying something new,” she says. “Trying to figure out who I am, who I want to be, you know?”

“…So you decided a 180-degree image change was the way to go?”

“Please, you know I look fabulous,” Priya says, and winks. “Speaking of makeovers, is that a _new_ plaid shirt?”

“Hey,” says Ellie defensively, tugging at the hem of her dark green plaid shirt. “It’s a good plaid shirt.”

“Honey, if you’re able to discern when you’re wearing one of your good plaid shirts, you’ve got too many plaid shirts,” says Priya, but she’s grinning. “You wear them, like, _all_ the time.”

“I don't wear them all the time,” Ellie says, indignant. “I’ll have you know that I also wear t-shirts some of the time.”

Priya smiles like this proves her point, and waves her hand in the air. “You, my buddy, my girl-pal, need a change of wardrobe. New school year, new you, and all that jazz.”

Ellie sighs, and walks past Priya to flop onto the bed. “I buy all my clothes from Goodwill, Priya. Goodwill isn’t known for staying ahead of the fashion curve. You know this.”

Priya rolls her eyes. “Please,” she says. “I didn’t grow up receiving cast-offs from two sisters and one brother to _not_ know how to make hand-me-downs look good. Just give me a sewing kit and we’ll be golden.”

And so it transpires that two weeks later, they’re in the closest Goodwill to Grinnell, Priya browsing through the racks and racks of donated clothes while Ellie awkwardly watches. “No skirts,” Ellie warns, when she sees Priya reach for some kind of floor-length floral monstrosity hanging at the end of a rack, and Priya sighs but leaves the skirt.

A little while later, Priya’s amassed a pile of clothes in her arms. She pulls out a few and passes them to Ellie. “Put those on,” she says, “but _don’t_ look in the mirror until I tell you to, okay?”

Ellie, accepting her fate by this point, sighs and accepts the bundle. There’s only one changing room in this Goodwill, a tiny little mirror-less corner barely covered by a thin curtain, and Ellie dumps the pile of clothes on the ground, trying to figure out what she’s been given. None of them are items Ellie would have normally picked for herself, but a part of her muses that this is probably the point of the forced shopping trip, anyway.

“There,” she says, pulling aside the curtain. “This is weird.”

“Hold up,” Priya says. “One last thing.”

She comes forward and yanks the hair tie out of Ellie’s hair, and Ellie feels her doing something with it near the top of her head for almost five minutes before she pulls away with a satisfied hum.

“Come,” she says. “Have a look.”

Priya pulls her to the only mirror in the store, and Ellie stares. Looking back out at her is a stranger she almost doesn’t recognise, hair pulled up into a messy bun, clad in a V-neck t-shirt half-tucked into jeans that end halfway down her calves, with a leather jacket Priya had grabbed from the men’s section (the smallest size on the rack) thrown over the top. If not for the glasses still perched on her nose, Ellie would’ve sworn she was looking at a different person – one who looked confident, who looked like she knew who she was, and who she wanted to be.

“It’s-” Ellie says, pauses, swallows. “I don’t hate it.”

“I’ll help you take in the jeans to make them slimmer,” Priya says. “But you look _great_ , girl.”

“It’s weird,” Ellie says. “But, I guess, weird in a good way. I might wear this, from time to time.”

“Success!” says Priya, and fist-pumps into the air.

“I mean,” Ellie hastens to amend. “I’m still going to wear my plaid shirts, most of the time. I _like_ those.”

“I figured I wouldn’t be able to break you of that,” shrugs Priya. “But at least you’ve got new stuff to mix and match it with.”

Ellie smiles. “Yeah,” she says. “I’d like that.”

~

She’s on the way back to hall one night when it happens. She and Priya had been dragged (“ _Invited_ ,” Rebecca had said, rolling her eyes) to the charity screening of _Spirited Away_ that the Japanese Culture Club was organising; Rebecca, treasurer of the club and main organiser of the event, had asked them along to support the event.

The movie itself is good; Ellie’s never seen an animated movie before, never really seen a movie outside of the classic, black-and-white genre her Ba prefers, and decides that if all Ghibli movies are this good, she should make some time to watch them all.

Priya had gone ahead back to hall once the movie had ended, citing a family call that she couldn’t afford to miss, but Ellie, having nothing better to do on a Friday night, stays behind to help Rebecca clean up. It’s late when they start heading back to Smith Hall, each holding a bag laden with audiovisual equipment. The nights are starting to turn cold, and Ellie is just beginning to bitterly regret leaving her room in only her standard plaid shirt with a t-shirt layered underneath, when Rebecca snorts and puts down her bag.

“Come here, you dork,” she says. She sets down her bag on the pavement and turns to face Ellie, unwinding the hand-knitted scarf that’s coiled twice around her neck and draping it over Ellie instead. It’s warm and smells faintly like the _houjicha_ that Rebecca likes to drink on late nights.

“Won’t you be cold?” Ellie asks, for the lack of anything better to say, but Rebecca only raises an eyebrow, gestures to her own leather jacket.

“I’m more prepared for autumn than you,” she says, smirking. “Seriously, Chu, did they _not_ have seasons in your small town?”

“I didn’t-” Ellie starts to say, but they’re interrupted by a loud yell coming from behind them.

“Oi, you _dykes_ , nobody needs to see your disgusting homo shit out in the open,” said the slurred voice loudly, and Ellie glances in the direction of the voice to see a middle-aged man, very visibly drunk, stumbling towards them intently.

“Ignore him, let’s go,” Rebecca says under her breath, dropping her hands from the scarf and bending to pick up her bag once more. She reaches for Ellie’s arm and begins to walk forward briskly, pulling Ellie along with her.

Ellie, not prepared to react to either the angry yelling or the sudden movement, stumbles along in Rebecca’s wake. It’s not that bigotry is unfamiliar to her, and she’s definitely read about it; but in small, quiet Squahamish, where everyone had stuck to the _status quo_ instead of sticking out, there was nobody really available for bigots to openly discriminate against, at least in the (small) circles that Ellie moved in. Sure, Ellie’s had her fair share of people looking at her funny because she was the only Chinese girl in town, but this focused, homophobic rage is something new entirely.

“Have fun burning in _hell_ ,” the man calls after them. “Sinners, _miscreants_!”

“I’m surprised he’s sober enough to know what that word means,” Rebecca mutters, but Ellie’s only half-listening. She remembers harsh light from a vending machine, lips still warm from a kiss she’d never asked for, horrified brown eyes staring at her, a quiet yet determined whisper of “ _you’re going to hell_ ”. She knows, of course, that Paul hadn’t meant it, hadn’t known better at the time, and he’d apologised to her for it since then.

_But Paul_ , her mind thinks, _was never the child of a pastor. That was-_

And it’s that thought that stays with her as Rebecca drags the both of them back into the warmth and safety of Smith Hall, the angry drunkard left far behind to continue yelling into the empty night on a pavement, somewhere.

“Chu?” Rebecca’s asking now, peering at her in concern. “Ellie? You alright?”

Ellie nods. “Sorry,” she says, taking off the scarf and handing it back to Rebecca, and Rebecca raises an immaculately-plucked brow.

“What for?”

“Didn’t it bother you? What that guy was saying.”

Rebecca sighs, accepting the scarf and stuffing it into her bag. “Drunkards will say all sorts of things,” she says. “They’re not worth getting upset over. Besides,” she continues, and Ellie wonders if she’s imagining the slight hint of challenge that colours Rebecca’s tone, “it’s not like there’s anything wrong with being a lesbian, is there?”

Thrown by this, Ellie stares back at Rebecca, mind whirling to come up with an appropriate response. She must take too long, because she sees something shutter in Rebecca’s gaze.

“Thanks for helping me with these,” she says, voice cool, as she takes the other bag of audiovisual equipment from Ellie’s unresisting arms. “Good night.”

“It’s not-” Ellie blurts, as Rebecca’s about to head up the stairs. She takes a deep breath, lets it out, because this is _important_. Because she’s seen the little rainbow flag pin on a discreet side-pocket of Rebecca’s backpack, because she remembers the warmth of a girl’s lips on her own, remembers how there had been no shame, only relief and understanding. “It’s not wrong,” she says, halting. “Um. To like girls. I know that. But what he said, about lesbians going to hell…”

She sees the stiff set of Rebecca’s shoulders relax a little, and the older girl turns, gazes at her silently for a while. Finally, she sighs and says: “An open hallway like this isn’t the place for this conversation. Come on.”

They head up to Rebecca’s room, which Ellie’s never set foot in before. The door reads _Rebecca Yamamura / Emily Teo_ , but unlike the other rooms’ name tags which are typed out in Arial font, these appear to have been neatly written in fountain pen. Inside the room is a wash of colour and mess – in one corner there’s a laundry hamper filled with untidy balls of yarn and what looks to be a half-completed blanket with a crochet hook stuck in it; in another corner there’s five mini-cactuses lined up in a row on the windowsill. Occupying pride of place on the far wall is a poster from the _Wonder Woman_ movie.

“Pardon the mess,” Rebecca says, as she sets down the bags and reaches for a mini-fridge under her desk. “If you find knitting needles on the floor, they’re Emily’s; I don’t understand how they’re always everywhere. It’s sorcery.”

She pulls out a can of beer, and then hands to Ellie two small bottles of what looks like Yakult, except instead of the red foil lid she’s used to, the foil on these ones is purple. “Grape flavour,” she explains in response to Ellie’s visible confusion. “You’re the Yakult fiend, aren’t you? Emily just realised the Yakult stash she brought back from Singapore expires this week, and has been trying to finish them before they expire, but I’ve just about reached my limit for them. I’m sure she won’t mind if you drink some of it.”

“Um,” says Ellie, trying to pretend like her Yakult worldview hasn’t just been rocked to its core by the knowledge that _flavoured_ Yakult exists somewhere in the world. “Thanks.”

“Emily’s my girlfriend, by the way,” Rebecca continues nonchalantly, sitting down on her bed and popping open the can of beer.

“I’m not-” Ellie says firmly, abruptly. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with liking girls.”

She’s silent, going through the words in her head, deciding what to say, and Rebecca smiles a small knowing smile. “Don’t feel obliged to tell me if you don’t want to,” she says quietly. “But just know that it’s a safe space for queer thoughts, here.”

Ellie’s never told anyone about this. Well, Paul sort of knows because he was directly present during her lesbian awakening, but aside from him, she’s kept it close to her chest, years of pretending to exist in the background in Squahamish forcing old habit onto her even in this new town.

But Rebecca is patient, gives good advice, and – more importantly, Ellie thinks – knows what it means to be in love with a girl. So she ruthlessly organises her thoughts, takes a sip of the grape Yakult in her hand, and-

She pauses, looks down at the purple Yakult, and takes another sip. “This,” she breathes, train of thought momentarily forgotten, “is _incredible_.”

Rebecca snorts. “I’ll let Emily know,” she says mirthfully. “I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to know she’s converted someone else to the church of grape-flavoured Yakult.”

Ellie clears her throat awkwardly, and reclaims her train of thought. “Do you believe in soulmates?” she asks, serious now. “The idea that there’s someone out there who’s just meant to be your perfect other half?”

Rebecca hums, thinking. “Yes, and no,” she says, slowly. “I believe that soulmates exist, that there are people out there with whom you can just click, people who just _get_ you. But I don’t necessarily believe that that means you’re meant to be with them. I think that’s just a very lazy way of thinking about love.”

“How so?”

“To think that someday you’ll meet someone someday who’ll be your perfect match, is a slippery slope towards thinking that you’ll definitely have a perfect, happy relationship as long as you can find your soulmate. That if you find the ‘right one’, you won’t need to put in any effort in order to keep your relationship healthy and alive, because the magic of the soulmate bond would be more than sufficient,” says Rebecca. She takes a long drink from her beer can. “But I don’t believe that’s all you need. Sure, you might have found the right person, but it might not be the right time. And even if it _is_ the right time, you’ll need to keep putting in the effort to maintain the relationship.”

Ellie sighs, and looks down at the floor reaches out to play with a little bit of yarn fluff trapped between the cracks of the floorboards.

“There was a girl,” she says quietly, not looking up. “Back in Squahamish. She… she’s a pastor’s daughter.”

“…Oh,” says Rebecca, understanding creeping into her voice.

“Her father gave sermons at the church in town,” Ellie continues, on a roll now, a burning desire to get this rock off her chest pushing the words out of her mouth, tumbling over each other in their eagerness to be spoken aloud into the air. “He was…conservative, I guess, though I never really had any other point of comparison as far as pastors go. One of his favourite teachings was that to be gay is a sin, and that such sinners would burn in the deepest reaches of hell and couldn’t be redeemed. That to love someone differently was fundamentally and morally _wrong_. I never cared about it, because I’ve never believed in God. But she…”

She remembers Aster’s face when she’d kissed her in broad daylight in the middle of the road, remembers the light in her eyes reminiscent of a person about to skydive out of an airplane: enthralled, and yet entirely terrified. “I’d never believed in soulmates, not until I met her,” she says. “I could talk to her for hours on end, discuss books and movies and philosophy until the sun came up, and still have more to ask her. It felt comfortable, with her, and I’m at least fairly certain she felt the same click that I did, the same feeling of rightness. But she hasn’t figured herself out yet, and I’m pretty sure this contradiction between what she’s been taught and what I hope she feels isn’t helping. When I left to come to Grinnell, it felt like perhaps what we had could one day be something more. But the more I think about it, the more I’m not sure.”

Rebecca is silent for a while. “I’m not religious,” she says, after an introspective pause. “My mother’s Buddhist, but my dad’s a free-thinker, and they never really cared about any of the religious stuff growing up. But Emily’s Christian, and she’s talked to me once or twice about it. From what I understand, not every Christian interprets the teachings of the Bible in the same way. Emily’s told me that she believes the most important commandment of Jesus is to love one another, and to treat others with the same love with which you would treat yourself. She believes that Jesus had always made it a point to look out for the downtrodden and the outcast, and he helped them all the same, and that to discriminate against queer people and condemn them rather than show them love acceptance would not be to live a life in accordance with His teachings. That’s how she’s reconciled being a Christian and being a lesbian.”

Ellie sighs, and opens up the second bottle of Yakult.

“I guess maybe, as you said, it was the wrong time, for me and her,” she says.

“Did you tell her?”

Ellie half-shrugs. “Not exactly? I mean,” and here she feels her cheeks flush, “I might have kissed her. Sort of right before I left for Grinnell. And then told her I’d be back in a few years.”

“And?” Rebecca asks. “What did she say?”

“She said that she’d be sure of herself in a few years,” Ellie says, smiling a little at the memory, and Rebecca laughs, downing the last of the beer.

“Well then, Ellie Chu,” she says. “You take these few years to find yourself too. And then maybe the next time you meet your pastor’s daughter, it’ll be the right time.”

~

When the announcement comes in the spring that the _Wall Street Journal_ is opening its internship applications, Ellie sends in her own hastily-cobbled CV on a whim, and doesn’t think too much of it. She loves writing essays about books and themes and ideas, but journalism is a chance to try writing essays about human stories instead, and a part of her is curious to find out if she’s suited for it.

They call her back for a phone interview, and then another, and she tries her best, but doesn’t hold out high hopes. She still remembers her Ba’s difficulty in getting jobs he was otherwise qualified for, because of the spelling of his name, and though she tries to hope that times have changed she doesn’t bank on it.

It’s therefore a complete surprise when she opens her email one morning to see an email in her inbox: _Dear Ms Chu, we are pleased to offer you an internship position with the Wall Street Journal at its offices in New York…_

The first emotion that comes is excitement, followed swiftly by panic as she realises that she’ll now need to figure out accommodation in New York.

_I got a summer internship_ , she types to Paul, even as she’s scrolling through cheap apartments on Airbnb. _In New York, though._

_!!!!!!_ , is his immediate reaction, followed swiftly by a phone call.

“Oh my god,” he says, the moment she picks up. “Was it the _Wall Street Journal_ one?”

“Yes,” she says.

“Look at you, going places,” he says fondly, and she can hear a door slam faintly from his end of the line. “I’m super excited for you, but at the same time I’m bummed you won’t be home for the summer again.”

That thought hadn’t occurred to her, and she deflates a little. “I know,” she says. “I miss Ba, and you, but-”

“Don’t get defensive,” he says, cutting her off. “It’s an important opportunity for you, and you deserve it. We’ll always have Skype, anyway.”

She sinks back into her chair, holding her phone to her ear. “Thanks,” she says quietly. “It means a lot, you know?”

“Hey, don’t sweat it,” he says. “Hang on-” Another door slam, and then: “Mr Chu! Ellie says she’s got an internship in New York for the summer- No, she won’t be coming back- Yes, she’s on the line, hold on-”

There’s a fumble on the line, and then Ellie hears the familiar voice of her Ba. “New York, mm?” he asks in Mandarin, and she smiles to hear the familiar cadences.

“With the _Wall Street Journal_. I’m sorry I’ll be away all summer again,” she says back in the same language, and he chuckles warmly.

“I’m proud of you, Ellie,” he says. “And I am sure your Ma would have been very proud of you too. There is no need to apologise.”

“It’s going to cost money to get an apartment there,” she says, “and I don't know if the internship pay is going to be enough to cover it.”

“We will work something out,” he says. “Do not worry, there is still time.” A pause. “Have you eaten?”

“I’ve just had breakfast,” Ellie says, looking at the half-eaten granola bar she’d dropped on her desk out of excitement. “You?”

“Paul made what he calls a ‘sausage hash’,” her Ba says dryly, carefully sounding out the last two words in English. “There are a lot more potatoes than I am used to, but it smells not too bad.”

Ellie smiles, closing her eyes and imagining Paul and her Ba puttering around their tiny kitchen, the house rich with the scent of sizzling meat. “I’ll talk to you this weekend,” she says.

“Yes. Drink more water,” he replies, and the phone is passed back to Paul.

Two hours later, she’s still on Airbnb when Priya bursts in, arms laden with messy notes from her lecture. “Hey, girl,” she says, waggling her fingers at Ellie. “You look down. What’s up?”

“I got the internship in New York for _WSJ_ ,” Ellie says.

“And you’re _glum_?” Priya asks incredulously. “Dude, that’s incredible news.”

“I’m still looking for places to stay during the internship,” Ellie explains, gesturing halfheartedly to the Airbnb window still open on her browser. “Rental in New York is _expensive_.”

“Oh, is that it?” Priya says. “You know, my family stays in Brooklyn. If you don’t mind being on the New York subway for more than ten minutes in order to get to and from work, you can come and crash with us for the summer. _Amma_ and _appa_ won’t mind, and my brother’s bedroom has been empty ever since he got married and moved out to San Francisco.”

Ellie blinks at her, stunned.

“Really?” she asks, hardly daring to believe her luck.

“Yeah?” Priya shrugs. “I’m pretty sure I told you before, that I live in New York.”

“No, not about that- Are you sure your family will be okay with me freeloading for an entire summer?”

“I’ll call them later, just to be sure,” she says. “But I’ll be home the entire summer for internship as well, anyway. And it’s not like you’ll be freeloading – I’m sure _amma_ will ask for your help in washing the dishes at some point, and you can make us those vegetable dumplings that you’re always stress-making before finals. As long as you’re alright with eating vegetarian food pretty much the entire summer, it should be fine. And it’ll be dope to spend time with you in the summer, when we’re not both slaving away over assignments.”

“I think,” Ellie says, a warm feeling blooming in her heart as she looks into Priya’s eyes, “that you should probably clear this with your mum first. But if she says okay, I think I would love that.”

~

Summer in New York is everything Ellie has ever imagined life in a big city would be like. It’s hectic, a whirl of colour and sound and _life_ , and Ellie finds herself thinking that she’s never really missed the quiet of Squahamish until now. The city never sleeps, here, whether she’s out on the streets after a late night rushing an article out for tomorrow’s paper, or curled up with Priya on her family’s couch being inducted into the colourful world of Bollywood movies and then calling for late-night delivery.

It’s fun at the _Wall Street Journal_ , in a way she hadn’t been expecting. Talking to people isn’t her strong suit, and sometimes she thinks she would much rather be writing essays about philosophy than politics, but she won’t deny that being plugged into the heartbeat of the daily news is exciting in a very different way; waking up every morning not knowing what she’s going to be doing at work is its own brand of exhilarating.

Today begins like any other Saturday – she sleeps in till 10 before rolling out of bed. Priya’s brother lives across the country, now, but his room is still papered with posters of _Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles_ and decorated with various WWE memorabilia, but it’s warm and lived-in, and Ellie wouldn’t trade it in for a cold empty apartment any day. The sun shines in through the window and reflects off the screen of her phone, lying on the desk where she’d forgotten to charge it last night.

Priya’s parents are early risers, and they’ve already left for their weekly weekend walk around the neighbourhood by the time Ellie staggers out into the kitchen. There’s a plate of still-warm _dosa_ wrapped in clingfilm on the dining table, _For Ellie_ written on a post-it stuck to the top, and she smiles to herself. Priya might swear by her daily breakfast of fruit granola and oat milk, but the homemade _dosa_ with its little treasure-pocket of spiced potato in the centre is something Ellie’s grown addicted to in her stay at the Rajendran household, the complex mix of flavours new yet somehow familiar on her tongue.

Priya’s yawning into a glass of oat milk, half-slumped across the dining table. “Plans?” she asks, and Ellie shrugs.

“We could go see a museum-” she begins, and Priya groans dramatically.

“We went to the Guggenheim last weekend,” she says. “Ellie, _have mercy_.”

Ellie raises a brow. “Do you have any better ideas?”

“There’s a hipster food festival at Prospect Park,” Priya says immediately, like she’s found the website on Google two hours prior and was just _waiting_ for Ellie to ask. “The theme is fusion cuisines from all around the US.”

It sounds interesting, Ellie’s got nothing better to do, and – more importantly – she’s still hungry after finishing the _dosa_. “Sure,” she says.

It’s another hour before they leave the house, mostly due to Priya’s long morning showers but also due to Priya trying to wrestle Ellie’s hair into a braid. (Priya loses the fight, but Ellie concedes and lets her pin it up into a messy bun and stick some kind of hair-stick through it.) The early afternoon sun bears down on the both of them, and Ellie finds herself mildly regretting the denim overshirt she’d thrown on.

The food festival is in full swing. Ellie, never having seen a food festival quite on this scale before, stares down the rows of little white tents, each with a little signage hanging outside announcing what they’re serving, from duck rilette _banh mi_ sandwiches to Japanese-style pasta, and the ubiquitous boba stall. The smell of oil and smoke hangs in the air like an invisible mist, threaded through faintly with the aroma of cooking food.

Ellie’s waiting for Priya to queue up for a stall selling Middle East-inspired mushroom burgers when she sees it. A little stall right at the end of the row, about five stalls down from where she’s standing, the proud red sign handing just below the tent canopy reading _Munsky’s Sausages_ – and her breath catches. _No way,_ she thinks.

“Priya,” she says absently, “I’m going just down this row, alright?”

Not waiting for Priya’s answer, she begins to walk down the row. As she gets closer she sees: a long grill rack set over charcoal embers, three sausages slowly roasting to perfection; a stack of hot dog buns and taco shells waiting to be filled; and, finally, a _very_ familiar stall-owner, mop of curly hair shaved into an undercut she does not remember, one hand tucked into a pocket and another flipping the sausages around.

There’s three girls waiting for their food, and Ellie hangs back to wait until they’ve collected their food before she marches straight up to the workstation. “Paul Munsky,” she says, and sees him jerk in surprise and look up, “when were you going to tell me that you were selling your sausages in _New York_?”

“Ellie!” He drops his tongs and immediately pulls her into a bear hug and, unbidden, she relaxes into his familiar embrace, warm and comforting like a summer’s night in Squahamish. “Did you get my text?”

“My phone’s out of battery,” she says. “I forgot to charge it last night. Did you seriously only text me _today_ to say that you were coming here?”

He grins sheepishly at her, and rubs the back of his head. “I was too busy trying to pack all my supplies, and I literally forgot until I woke up this morning,” he says. “Turns out, the reviewer from Wenatchee really liked my taco sausages, and recommended me to a friend of his who works with food markets in New York. They all came down to Squahamish to try my sausages, and next think I know I’ve got an email inviting me to set up a booth here. It’s been crazy since then.”

“Nice.”

“I know right? It’s _wild_. Ma couldn’t really say anything about it, either, since they offered to cover my transport and everything to get here.”

Ellie pats his arm, looks up at the sign on the table stating that two out of four kinds of sausage are already sold out. “You’re doing well,” she says. “I’m really happy for you, Paul.”

He crooks a half-smile at her, puts an arm around her shoulders. “I should be saying that to you.”

“Heyyyyy, girl,” she hears Priya come up behind her. “Oh, hi! Boyfriend?”

Ellie nearly chokes on her spit in her haste to turn around, but Paul beats her to a response. “Nah,” he says, snorting, “I’m not exactly _her type_.”

“Priya,” Ellie sighs, ignoring Paul’s teasing tone, “this is Paul Munsky. He’s my best friend from back home. Paul, this is Priya Rajendran, she’s my roommate at Grinnell.”

“Oh,” says Priya. “Is _this_ who keeps filling our fridge with sausages and dumplings during the term?

Ellie wants to put her face in her hands. “He does that _once_ a semester, Priya,” she says, but Priya’s cackling, already reaching for her phone.

“Any friend of Ellie’s is a friend of mine,” she says. “Here, it’ll take just a second and then you can go back to grilling. Do you have Instagram?”

“Yes,” says Paul, which is news to Ellie (though then again, Ellie doesn’t bother using Instagram, or any other form of social media, anyway). “It’s uh, mostly photos of my sausages, though.”

“That’s fine, mine’s mostly just pictures of other people’s dogs.”

“Sounds great!”

They spend the next two minutes looking through each other’s feeds and laughing, and Ellie begins to wonder whether she might end up regretting introducing her two closest (and most extroverted) friends to each other. _But_ , she thinks, a fond feeling in her chest as she watches the two of them coo over the photo of a puppy in a hot dog costume, _I guess it’s worth it._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> have a second chapter!! 
> 
> work's been kinda nuts so i haven't managed to progress much on the full draft, but i've got enough for this chapter, so here you go! some accompanying notes:
> 
> grinnell does indeed have a [japanese cultural association](https://www.grinnell.edu/campus-life/organizations), though i wasn't able to find more details on the kind of activities they do, so i made up my own.
> 
> singapore is apparently the [only country in the world that has flavoured yakult](https://danielfooddiary.com/2019/10/26/yakult/), which honestly blew my mind when i found out that _not_ everyone grows up with grape and apple yakult.
> 
> the food market that priya and ellie visit is based off [smorgasburg](https://www.smorgasburg.com/) in prospect park.
> 
> thank you so much to those who left kind comments on the last chapter - i'm hoping to be able to get updates on this story on a semi-regular basis, and am looking to have about 5-7 chapters in total!


	3. Chapter 3

Junior year opens to leaves gently curling into red-yellow-brown, falling across the wide pavements of Grinnell’s campus and crunching underfoot. Ellie’s rushing from one tutorial to another, half-drunk coffee in one hand and three notebooks in the other, hair half-falling out of the messy bun she’d twisted up and secured with a pencil when she’d woken up a little too late that morning.

There’s a large branch on the ground she doesn’t see, and she almost feels herself trip in slow motion. _Of course_ , she thinks, _Murphy’s law in action._

Except, she doesn’t end up face-planting onto the pavement, cold coffee spilled over her class notes and the sleeve of the new cardigan she’d scrounged up from a Goodwill in New York over the summer. She feels a hand push gently against her shoulder, and another gently wrap around her wrist, preventing the coffee cup from tipping any further.

“Woah there,” says a voice, amused, and Ellie looks up to see warm brown eyes in a freckled face, messy dirty-blonde hair tied into a side braid with a knitted beanie pulled loosely over the top. It’s a tall girl holding her up, her own book bag gently knocking against her side from the momentum of running to stop a fellow student from tripping over her own two feet.

“U-uh,” says Ellie, feeling her words dry up on the tip of her tongue. There’s a warmth in this girl’s easy smile that stirs something in her, and her mind scrabbles desperately for something to say. “I’m, uh, Ellie.”

( _Smooth_ , she thinks to herself. _Real smooth._ )

“I know,” says the girl, still grinning, as she pulls her hand back from Ellie’s shoulder, lets go of Ellie’s wrist. “Ellie Chu, right? You’re the one who’s always got something to say in Sex, Gender and Critical Theory. I’m Blake, by the way.”

Ellie winces a bit – Sex, Gender and Critical Theory is an extremely fascinating class, and she’s found herself volunteering for discussion much more than she usually would, purely because the topics are so relevant, so ripe for discussion. “I, um. Like the class.”

“I’m not saying it’s bad, you know,” says Blake. “I quite liked your point of view on privilege and white feminism that you raised at last week’s tutorial. Really got me thinking.”

Ellie breathes in, breathes out, stands up straight and carefully adjusts her stack of notebooks. “I’m glad,” she says, for the lack of anything better to say, her heart beating nervous double-time in her chest for some unknown reason. “Thanks. For, well, saving me from death by pavement. And my notes from death by coffee stain.”

“No worries at all,” says Blake easily. “I’m glad I could be of assistance.”

There’s a beat of awkward silence, before Ellie clears her throat. “Well,” she says. “I should get, uh, to class. Thanks again, I really owe you one.”

Blake nods, but there’s a look in her eyes like she’s struggling with the desire to say something, so Ellie waits a heartbeat more.

“If you want,” she says, “you could make it up by going for a coffee with me sometime.”

Ellie blinks. Coffee doesn’t sound too bad, and there’s a easy familiarity about this complete stranger that makes it feel like she’s known this girl for a while, sets her at ease. “S-sure,” she says, blinking. “I wouldn’t mind.”

They meet up later that week for a coffee in a slightly less shitty café down the street from Grinnell, a small cozy establishment not full of sleep-deprived students hunkered over textbooks while clutching their fifth cups of coffee. Blake’s waiting outside the café, nervously pacing around in heeled combat boots, face tucked into her thick woollen scarf and hands jammed into the pockets of her long cardigan. As she looks up and spots Ellie approach, she straightens up from her slight slouch, eyes lighting up.

“Here!” she says. “They’re still half-empty, and they’ve got a student deal for brunch.”

“Perfect,” says Ellie.

They talk for three hours, squished into a tiny booth by the window of the café. Ellie learns that Blake’s full name is Blake Giuliani (“No relation to Rudy Guliani, I _promise_ ”), the middle child of five Italian-American siblings, and her family stays in Iowa itself. She’s a psychology major in her junior year who’d taken the Sex, Gender and Critical Theory module purely out of interest, she’s allergic to cats, and she loves karaoke.

“Blake doesn’t sound like a very Italian name,” says Ellie, idly stirring her latte.

“Ellie doesn’t sound like a very Chinese name,” Blake counters, but she’s smiling. “It was a compromise – my mum really liked William Blake, so that’s where my name came from. Dad got to choose the middle name, but it sounds weird so I never use it.”

Ellie raises an eyebrow. “Oh, now you’ve _got_ to tell me.”

“…Mariella,” Blake says, making a face. “It sounds like the name of a girl in fifteenth-century Rome.”

“It’s a pretty name,” says Ellie honestly. “I like it.”

Perhaps it’s a trick of the light, but for a second Ellie thinks Blake flushes a bit, ducking her head down into her scarf, but she recovers quickly. “Do you have a Chinese name as well?”

Ellie does in fact have a Chinese name, but nobody’s used it ever since her Ma passed away. Ma used to call her by her Chinese name, and the first time Ba had tried to call her that after the funeral she’d flinched unconsciously. Since then, she’d always been ‘Ellie’ at home.

“Hui,” she says, now. It’s been a while since she’s said it aloud, but the pain of hearing it has long dulled, bringing with it only a warm nostalgia. “It means ‘intelligent and wise’.”

“Hm,” Blake smiles around the rim of her espresso cup. “Very on the nose. I like it.”

~

Ellie accidentally spends most of junior year not thinking about Aster Flores. It’s not like she makes herself a promise not to moon over warm brown eyes, or think about the feeling of soft lips on hers- it happens without her noticing. It goes a little something like this:

The one coffee with Blake becomes a weekly coffee meeting, always at the same café. Sometimes they bring their books and quietly work, but the café’s got a strict policy against students doing work on their premises, and they often get chased out. Other times it’s spirited discussions about what happened in class, both of them already on their third cup of coffee.

Blake talks with her hands. It’s something Ellie begins to notice on their second or third meeting. Her slim pianist’s fingers wave animatedly in the air, gesturing as she speaks, and sometimes Ellie has a hard time focusing on what Blake’s saying because she’s too distracted by Blake’s hands, drawing invisible pictures in the air.

“Oh my god,” says Blake one day, laughing, “wait, you’ve never watched an _anime_ before?”

“Never in my life,” Ellie shrugs. “We always watched old movies at home, and nobody in Squahamish was really into that kind of thing. They were more into, uh, football and stuff.”

“There was a Japanese-American girl in my class in middle school, who sat next to me in class,” says Blake. “She introduced it to me, and I’ve never looked back since. You should totally watch one. It’s a formative experience.”

Blake’s eyes are alight with mirth as she tries (and fails) to describe the complicated plot of her favourite _anime_ show without giving away too many spoilers, and even though Ellie’s never seen anything more modern than 1980’s TV she has to admit she’s intrigued. _Anything that can bring a person so much joy just to talk about_ , she thinks _, must be worth at least checking out_.

So of course, it’s only natural that they wind up squished side-by-side on Blake’s bed in her room, Blake pulling up _Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood_ on her Netflix and offering her right earbud to Ellie. “You absolutely have to watch it with the subtitles,” she says, grinning. “I am a strong believer that English dubs are a crime on this green earth.”

“I’m not entirely sure I know what a ‘dub’ is, but I trust your judgment,” Ellie says, mock-seriously accepting the earbud.

As it turns out, the show is _fascinating_ , an interesting mix of pseudo-science and political intrigue and just enough darkness to make it more than just a simple children’s show.

Somewhere around the fourth or fifth episode, as the sun’s going down outside the window, Blake starts to sniffle as she stares at the screen, watching the animated events unfold.

“This is my least favourite episode of the _entire_ show,” she says, voice muffled through her sleeves. Onscreen, a little girl and a large dog wave adorably at the protagonist of the show, and Ellie frowns.

“Haven’t you watched this before?”

“I’ve seen it three times, but I still cry every time.”

Ellie can’t help but chuckle at that, and Blake whines into her sleeve piteously, shoves Ellie with her shoulder. “Don’t laugh at me until you watch the entire episode.”

After they watch the entire episode through, Ellie watches the end credits play in silence. “I take back the laughing,” she says, voice thick. She hasn’t cried during a show in very, _very_ long, but she’s definitely a little sniffly now. “That _hurt_.”

“The show gets better, I swear,” Blake says. “This episode is the hardest hurdle to cross. You’ll see, next episode.”

_Fullmetal Alchemist_ becomes a fortnightly weekend activity for them, always squished on Blake’s bed and abusing her Netflix account. There’s one day when Blake brings the laptop up to Ellie’s room, after Priya had caught wind of their binge sessions and demanded to join, but Blake swiftly bans Priya after the latter ‘accidentally’ drops three spoilers in the span of five minutes.

Halfway through the semester, the Japanese Culture Club has another movie screening and Blake, apparently a member of the Club, drags Ellie along. “They’re showing _Your Name_ ,” she says, “and you _definitely_ have to watch it, it’s one of my favourites.”

Ellie, having nothing much better to do on a Sunday afternoon, lets herself get dragged along. The movie is decent, a little too predictable in the plot for Ellie’s liking, but the soundtrack is amazing and the art breath-taking, so Ellie mentally chalks it up as a plus in her book. She hears Blake sniffling through the emotional end scenes of the movie, curled up on the bean bag next to hers on the floor, and she absently drapes an arm across Blake’s shoulders and pats her comfortingly.

(Blake leans slightly into her in response, the solid warmth of her side comforting.)

Some of the Japanese Culture Club alum had returned to join the movie session, and as the movie ends and the Club members begin to beeline towards the table full of snacks, Ellie catches sight of bright fuschia hair cut in a familiar bob, an absent smile that turns into a knowing grin when she catches sight of Ellie.

“You’re looking well,” Rebecca says, as she approaches.

“I could say the same to you,” Ellie returns. Rebecca looks more polished than when she graduated, shoulders lifted with a confidence that hadn’t been present when she was stressing over job applications this time last year.

“Adulthood sucks,” says Rebecca, “but once you start to get used to the idea that nobody knows what they’re doing, you adapt really fast.”

Blake chooses that moment to come back up from the snack table, a can of some soda with Japanese characters on it in one hand, and puts her chin on Ellie’s shoulder. She’s started doing this recently, usually to hide her face in Ellie’s shoulder when the slightly more grisly bits of _Fullmetal Alchemist_ come onscreen, so Ellie doesn't jerk in surprise, just sighs and lets it happen.

“Hey, Rebecca,” says Blake, grinning. There’s a look of faint… surprise? in Rebecca’s eyes, but Ellie can’t get a read on it before they shift to warm recognition.

“Blake,” she says, nodding. “I assume you’re responsible for dragging my young padawan to our Club?”

“I’m not a member,” Ellie says, “just hanging out.”

“She’s not a member _yet_ ,” Blake corrects. “But I’ve been inducting her into the world of animated movies, and figured it’d be a crime for her not to watch _Your Name_.”

“Fair enough,” says Rebecca, then, inexplicably, switches to another language and continues to talk. The vowels are rounded and intonation smooth, sounding somewhat like Mandarin and yet entirely unlike it, and if Ellie had to hazard a guess, it’s Japanese.

Even more surprising is when Blake sputters, and responds in the same language defensively. Ellie watches them banter back and forth for a bit, Rebecca with a smirk growing on her face, and Blake getting flustered, and Ellie wonders if this is what Paul feels like when she speaks to Ba in Mandarin while the three of them are all in the kitchen. If so, it’s a little weird, and she resolves to speak in English more the next time she goes back to Squahamish.

Eventually, someone from the other end of the room calls out to Rebecca, and the conversation ends with a switch back to English. “See you around, Ellie,” Rebecca says, and disappears into the crowd while Blake huffs, amused.

Ellie turns to Blake. “I didn’t know you spoke Japanese.”

“Uh,” Blake says, one hand going to the back of her neck, looking a little embarrassed. “I taught myself, mostly. At first because I wanted to watch _anime_ without looking at the subtitles, and then I started becoming interested in the culture and stuff as well, so I kept learning.”

Ellie, more than painfully aware that her Mandarin accent and fluency, practiced for the twenty-ish years of her life, is nowhere near what she’d like it to be, feels the perfect honesty emanating from her when she says: “That’s impressive.”

“Ah, it’s nothing that special. Languages come easily to me, that’s all,” says Blake, sheepishly.

“What did Rebecca talk to you about?”

For a moment, Ellie thinks she sees Blake’s cheeks flush (though it might just be a trick of the light), and she gets a little flustered again. “N-nothing much,” she says, with a little nervous grin. “Just asked how I knew you, told me to take care of you and stuff. As a friend.”

“Hm,” says Ellie, resolving not to look to deeply into Blake’s strange behaviour. “That’s nice of her.”

“Y-yeah, I guess.”

~

“So, spill the tea,” Priya says one morning, as they sit companiably by their shared window seat, Ellie holding a warm cup of _oolong_ tea made from the tin that Paul had sent along with the last frozen dumpling delivery, Priya with a concoction that’s got three shots of espresso and too much sugar.

“I’m not spilling this,” Ellie says indignantly, “it’s good tea.”

Priya badly conceals a laugh behind her mug. “You’re such a granny, sometimes,” she says, “how do you not know what it means to spill the tea?”

Ellie gives this comment the dead-eyed stare it deserves, and Priya backs up a little. “It means, give me the juicy details, girl. What’s with you and Blake?”

“Nothing,” says Ellie, bewildered. “I mean, she’s a good friend. I’m glad I met her, even it was entirely by chance.” A thought occurs to her then: “Wait, you know you’re still one of my closest friends here, right?”

“Oh, you’re adorable,” Priya grins. “Do you like Blake?”

“Of course, or else I wouldn't call her my friend,” says Ellie, not entirely seeing where Priya’s going with this.

“Ah, but do you like her, or do you like _like_ her?”

Ellie blinks. “Uh,” she says. She’s never thought about it, but she’s thinking about it now, unbidden: the warmth of Blake’s shoulder against hers after five hours of Netflix, Blake burying her face in the crook of Ellie’s neck when she wants to pretend she’s not crying at animated characters on a laptop screen, Blake’s sparkling eyes and dancing fingers painting a story as she discusses the newest topic that’s caught her fancy. “I don’t know,” she says, at last. “I’m not sure if I know what it means to, well, like someone in that way, if there are any indicators or some sort of checklist I can look at to confirm if I like someone that way.”

“Well,” says Priya. “There isn’t really a checklist or whatever, you nerd. It’s a feeling you get in your chest, when you just _know_.”

It’s so much like Paul’s advice from what feels like a lifetime ago, when she’d first asked him how to know when a girl wants to be kissed, and Ellie snorts. “Helpful,” she says dryly.

The conversation with Priya is all but forgotten by the time winter arrives. It’s her last café hangout with Blake before winter break begins, the two of them forgoing their usual lattes in favour of hot chocolate in deference to the season.

“Are you heading home for Christmas?” Blake asks.

“Not really,” says Ellie. “My family doesn’t really celebrate Christmas, and it’s not cheap to go back to Squahamish just for a holiday that my Ba and I don’t celebrate, anyway. My best friend back home takes him in for the holiday season, so he doesn't feel too lonely.”

“But then _you’ll_ be lonely,” Blake protests, and she’s got a glint in her eye now, the kind that means that she’s got an idea, and Ellie has a sense of foreboding.

“I’ll be fine,” she starts to say, but Blake barrels over her with: “Why don’t you come spend Christmas with my family?”

There’s an awkward pause, before Blake continues on, stumbling over her words. “I mean, you don’t have to feel obligated or anything. But my _nonna_ loves feeding people and she always makes too much food for Christmas, anyway, and I’m sure my parents won’t object. It’ll be real noisy because all the cousins are coming over for Christmas lunch, but it might be better than spending Christmas on your own.”

Ellie wavers. “I don’t want to impose,” she says, but Blake shakes her head.

“You won’t be imposing,” she says. “Actually- hang on, let me get you verbal confirmation.”

Before Ellie can say anything further, Blake’s whipped out her phone and is calling her mother. One half-English, half-Italian conversation later, Blake’s hanging up with a satisfied smile on her face. “Mum says you’re welcome to come,” she says. “I told her you don’t usually celebrate Christmas, and she seemed distraught at the thought. I hope you’re prepared to be stuffed full of Italian-style Christmas lunch and dinner.”

And so it transpires that Ellie finds herself in the backseat of Blake’s dad’s car on the first day of winter break, driving out towards Iowa City, pulling up outside a white brick-and-mortar house with a number of colourful vines painted all across the front wall.

“My sister painted that,” says Blake, following her gaze. “We figured it was too much hassle to redo the paint job, so we've just left it up.”

She’s introduced to Blake’s parents and three of her four siblings in short order – the oldest brother is working in London and is only flying in a couple of days later. Blake’s mother is a kindly woman with Blake’s eyes and smile, a spot of flour on her cheek as she hugs Blake, and then Ellie. “Blake’s told me all about her new friend,” she says. “I’ve set up a spare mattress for you in Blake’s room, I hope you don’t mind.”

“It’s fantastic,” says Ellie faintly, already overwhelmed by all the people in the house, the heavy scents of basil and frying meat wafting out from the kitchen, and the echoes of people yelling up and down the stairs.

Blake, perhaps sensing this, gently tugs on her arm. “I’ll bring Ellie up to my room, then,” she says, and they head up.

Blake’s room faces the morning sun, and it’s covered head to toe in peeling posters, some of them bleached from years spent basking in the daylight streaming in from the windows. Ellie thinks she recognises one of Roy Mustang from _Fullmetal Alchemist_ , but before she can take a closer look Blake says: “Uh, please ignore the posters on the wall. I’ve been in this room since I was five, pretty much.”

Ellie laughs, but obligingly tears her eyes away from the posters. “You know I won’t judge you,” she teases. “It’s not like we’re halfway done with our _anime_ marathon or anything.”

“Well,” Blake huffs, but her eyes are dancing, so Ellie figures she isn’t actually mad.

“Seriously, though,” Ellie says. “Thanks for having me.” Blake smiles, warm like a summer’s day, and shakes her head.

“You’re always welcome,” she says.

The house gradually fills up over the next few days, cousins and aunts and uncles beginning to pop in for the festivities. They’re all thrilled by the idea of someone new joining in on the Christmas celebrations, and Ellie quickly loses count of how many of them want to talk to “ _Blake’s friend_ ”. It’s strange, somewhat reminiscent of the chaos at the Munsky house that she’s become somewhat familiar with, but at slightly lower decibels.

The night after Christmas dinner, they’re sitting on Ellie’s borrowed mattress, backs against Blake’s bedframe, when she catches sight of the guitar case in the corner.

“You play guitar?” Ellie asks, pointing to the case.

“I uh, tried to learn it,” Blake says, sounding sheepish. “But I was terrible at it, so I stopped. It’s a hand-me-down from my older brother, but nobody else was interested in playing it so it’s been vegetating in my room since.”

Ellie’s fingers itch for the press of metal wires against her finger-pads, missing the feel of the guitar she’d left back home in Squahamish. “May I?”

“Oh, please, go ahead.”

Ellie unzips the case and pulls out the guitar, a black beauty that’s only slightly dusty but rather out of tune. She spends a good ten minutes tuning the strings to her liking before she realises that there’s no pick on this guitar, and resigns herself to idle fingerplucking. Unbidden, her muscle memory goes to the last song she’d played, the song she’d done at the talent show in high school. The chords come easily to her, like a long-forgotten friend, and she loses herself just for a moment in the music, humming softly in tune.

“Brilliant,” she hears Blake say in a whisper, and looks up to see Blake gazing at her with something unrecognisable in her eyes, something that makes her own heart skip a beat of its own. Blake blinks, then, and it’s gone, replaced by simple warmth. “You’re good,” she says.

“Music comes easily to me,” she replies, with a slight shrug. “Your parents won’t mind me making this kind of noise so late at night?”

“Honestly, I’ve done worse, so I don't think they will,” Blake says, shrugging. “I think as long as I haven't brought home a girlfriend or boyfriend, they pretty much don’t care what I do in my room.”

Ellie raises a brow at this. “Girlfriend?”

“Well,” says Blake, and her cheeks are definitely turning red now. “They don't think you’re my girlfriend, don’t worry. They wouldn’t have put you in my room, otherwise.”

The unrecognisable glint is back in Blake’s eyes now, the air heavy with silence. Ellie feels it again, the feeling you get in your heart when you’re on a roller coaster at the top of the slope, about to take the trust fall and feel the ground plummeting towards you.

(“ _It’s a feeling you get in your chest,_ ” she hears Priya’s voice in her head, the muffled voice of a distant memory, “ _when you just know._ ”)

“Do you want them to think I’m your girlfriend, though?” she asks, hoarsely, fingers stilling on the strings of the guitar. She doesn’t know what she’s asking for, doesn’t know what the reply will be, and she holds her breath, waiting.

“I don’t really care what they think of my relationships, since they’re just so strict on them all the time,” Blake shrugs. Ellie puts down the guitar by the side of the mattress, turns to face Blake fully.

“Then, how about what you think?” Ellie amends, and watches Blake swallow nervously.

“Um,” she says. There’s a moment, where it seems like she’s steeling herself, and when she meets Ellie’s eyes there’s a look of nervous determination behind them. Quickly, before Ellie has time to react, she’s leaning forward, one hand reaching out to cradle the back of Ellie’s skull and then-

Lips on hers, slightly cracked, faintly perfumed with the scent of the _panettone_ they’d eaten at dinner, a blend of honey-sweet apricots and the faintest hint of cinnamon. Ellie feels Blake’s nose awkwardly bump her glasses, feels their teeth clack against each other as Blake jerks back, eyes wide.

“That,” she says softly, nervously, as though afraid to break the delicate tension between them, “is what I think.”

Ellie thinks about the warmth of Blake’s hand at the base of her skull, carded through her hair. She thinks about the warmth and joy in Blake’s eyes when she looks at her, the smile that looks like the sun itself lived inside her body. She thinks about how speaking with Blake feels easy, familiar, as though they’ve known each other for years instead of months. She thinks about the feeling of lips on her own, of diving off the cliff and trusting that someone will catch her when she hits the bottom.

_Priya was right_ , Ellie thinks, but does not say this aloud. Instead, she whispers: “I like the way you think,” and reaches out to pull Blake in for another kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLO, i'm back! in case you couldn't tell, this where the ellie/OFC tag comes in.
> 
> in case you were wondering, the episode of fma:b that kills blake and ellie is indeed the infamous nina and alexander episode. Also in case you couldn't tell, I am 100% a subtitles person.
> 
> [panettone](https://www.browneyedbaker.com/panettone-recipe/) is italian christmas bread studded with tons of dried fruit - think a fruitcake, except the cake is light fluffy bread. i have it on good authority that italian _nonnas_ (grandmothers) love feeding people, but this is all secondhand knowledge as I'm not actually italian, so please let me know if this is wrong!!
> 
> we're drawing closer to the point in this fic that I'd pre-written up to - depending on my work schedule, i'll try my best to write fast enough to post at this weekly pace, but we shall see! ><


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some discussion re: coming out and pda in this chapter.

It takes all of two minutes after Priya comes back from Christmas break before she finds out. (Not that Ellie and Blake had agreed to keep this… thing…. between them a secret, but she’s still cautious, still not about to go shouting from the rooftops that she’s dating another girl right now.)

“Girl,” says Priya, hip-checking her way into the room, holding a large Styrofoam box in her hands. “My _amma_ made enough frozen food to last a month, so uh, Merry Christmas, here’s some authentic food from Casa Rajendran as your gift!”

Ellie looks up, blinking, from where she’d been slouched against the windowsill, watching _Fullmetal Alchemist_ on Netflix Party with Blake.

“I’ve missed your mum’s cooking,” she says, pressing ‘pause’ on the player and typing out a quick message to Blake, “but are you even sure all of that will fit in the common fridge?”

“ _Amma_ packed it all into freezer bags so they could squish. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

Ellie comes over and peers into the box. Indeed, there’s a wide variety of freezer-bags stacked in the box, each filled with a single portion of some thick gravy and pressed flat to fit easily within. She can make out familiar words on some of the labels, names of foods she vaguely remembers from last summer when she’d stayed at Priya’s: _paneer makhani_ , _rajma_ , _chana dal_.

“They’d better,” she says, poking at one of the packets. “We have a not-exactly-legal mini-fridge, but it does _not_ have a freezer compartment.”

Priya doesn’t respond, and Ellie pulls back to see her staring. “What,” she says self-consciously, “do I have something on my nose?”

“You’re wearing a _cardigan_ ,” Priya accuses.

Ellie looks down at the long cardigan she’s wearing. She’d pilfered it (with permission) from Blake’s closet on her last day at Blake’s house, a grey knit cardigan that falls to her knees, sleeves ending just slightly before the tips of her fingers. It’s warm, and smells (even now) of the faint vanilla scent of Blake’s perfume, and with it wrapped around her it feels almost like Blake’s warm presence is right next to her.

“It’s comfortable,” she says in response, shrugging, and Priya begins to grin like a shark that’s scented blood.

“You don’t _own_ a cardigan, Ellie Chu,” she says. “You literally only have plaid shirts, regular button-up shirts, and like, two jackets. Neither of which are cardigans, or made from any kind of wool.”

“Well,” Ellie says, “I have a cardigan now.”

“I’ve seen Blake Giuliani walking around campus in that cardigan,” Priya continues, grinning. “What a coincidence.”

Ellie sighs. She’s well aware that she’s absolutely pants at lying, and this is Priya, who’s kept all her embarrassing secrets from the day they’d met, who’s been nothing but a supportive friend. It’s the knowledge that she’d be actively lying to Priya that pushes her to say: “Yeah, it _was_ Blake’s cardigan, but it’s mine now.”

“Awww,” Priya coos, “from your _girlfriend_?”

“Well, yeah.”

Ellie is treated to the sight of Priya choking on her spit the moment she says that, putting down the Styrofoam box on the floor to hack and cough and try to clear out her airways. “Wait,” she says, once she’s recovered her breath (but not necessarily her dignity, “for real?”

“Why would I joke about something like that? It’s bound to backfire.”

“Point.” Priya scowls and takes out her phone, starts furiously typing into it. “Now I owe Rebecca 50 bucks, dammit.”

Ellie blinks once, twice. “You…bet on whether Blake and I would get together?”  
  


“Girl, that’s a sucker bet,” Priya waves a hand, not looking up from where she’s pulling up Venmo on her phone. “I wouldn’t spend three hours a week in a café with someone, and then watch animated shows with them all night, unless I really liked them. Rebecca bet that something would happen this Christmas, and I foolishly bet that you wouldn’t realise your feelings yet.”

Priya pauses when she doesn’t respond, looks up at her, and sighs. “Rebecca says she’s already given Blake the shovel talk so I guess I don’t have to tell her where I’ll hide her body if she makes you cry, do I?”

That draws a startled laugh from Ellie. “Please don’t,” she says. “We’re still figuring this out, I guess. You’re really the first person I’ve told. Though I guess Rebecca’s the second now, by proxy.”

“Oh, crap,” says Priya. “Shit. Sorry. I didn’t realise you guys were planning to keep it under wraps and stuff.”

“We’re not trying to actively keep it a secret, I guess,” Ellie says, bites her lip. “But it’s so new, and I’ve never really had a girlfriend before, so it’s all a little overwhelming.”

Priya softens, and she reaches up to take Ellie’s hand. “If you need to talk,” she says, “you can come to me, alright? I mean, well, if you need to talk about the relationship, you should probably talk to Blake first, but you can always come to talk to me second, you understand?”

Ellie squeezes Priya’s hand. “Thank you,” she says, and means it. “I really appreciate it.”

~

Paul finds out two days later, when Ellie accidentally lets it slip on their Skype call, and the moment she does she notices a wide grin slowly begin to steal across his face.

“Ellie Chu,” he says, “I am _so proud_ of you, I just want you to know.”

Ellie remembers her lesbian awakening a few years ago, remembers Paul regaling her with the tale of his mother finding his search history on _how to know if you’re gay_. He’s certainly come a long way, and even though she’s seen or heard him come on this journey of casting aside the narrow views preached by the older generation in Squahamish, she’s still pretty proud of his, _their_ , progress.

“Thanks,” she says.

“You should’ve told me sooner,” Paul continues, his grin threatening to nearly split his face in two, and Ellie groans.

“It’s been _less than two weeks_ , Munsky.”

“Man, wait until I tell Mr Chu, he’s going to be-”

The world seems to stop for a moment, the tips of Ellie’s ears and the back of her neck growing first ice-cold, then burning hot, as a feeling of sheer panic shoots up her spine. “No,” she bursts out, cutting Paul off.

“…Hm?”

Ellie tries to breathe, one quick inhale, two, three, and then an exhale. “Don’t,” she says, voice shaking. “Don’t tell Ba.”

It’s not that she’s ashamed of who she is or who she loves, not really. Logically, she knows her Ba doesn’t listen to the homophobic rhetoric that Deacon Flores and other older members of the congregation share on occasion, knows that her kind and gentle Ba isn’t likely to judge her for loving someone different, loving someone outside the social norm. And yet.

_Yet_.

She remembers long nights spent in the train station booth, doing her homework by lanternlight so she can run out and signal the last train for the night. She remembers the slightly hunched silhouette of her father sitting by the armchair, gaze lost and wandering in grief in the days after her Ma’s passing, shadowed against the curtains as she walked to replace the signal-lights back in the booth for the night. _I’ll take care of us, Ba_ , she’d promised many times. _Don’t worry if you need time._

_One day,_ he’d replied once, gazing at the old black-and-white photograph on their mantel from her parents’ wedding day, her Ba and Ma beaming front and centre with various grandparents, cousins, siblings all gathered behind. _One day, when I am old, bring home a strong young man to help you, Ellie. Don’t carry the whole world on your own._

It’s not something he’d enforced, something he’d expected of her, but she knows that the relatively progressive idea of a girl loving another girl might not be something he’d considered, knows that in their tiny town where time never seemed to move, something outside the norm might come as a surprise. And Ellie finds that there’s a part of her that’s worried, _terrified_ to know how he might react.

(There’s a famous thought experiment, Schrödinger’s cat, which she’d written a bunch of essays on for Mrs Geselchap’s class back in sophomore year in high school. There’s a closed box containing both a cat and a decaying radioactive atom, and until you open the box, you won't know if the cat is alive or dead from the radioactive exposure.

The point of the experiment is that until the box is opened, two strands of possibility run in parallel: the cat is both alive _and_ dead, at the same time.

In one of the six essays she’d done on the topic, Ellie had written: _To the objective scientist, the cat in the box is a thought experiment, a funny little paradox. But the uncertainty of not knowing, the suspense of wondering whether one will open the box to find a healthy cat or a still corpse, makes Schrödinger’s cat an instrument of constant dread. If one, fearing that they will open the box to find a dead cat, never opens the box, the cat remains suspended between realities at once, and the person looking at the box remains in a constant state of dread. It is a stalemate, and one in which neither party is likely to turn out for the better._

She feels like the person faced with Schrödinger’s box, now, standing in front of the closed doors of her home and hesitating to knock, hovering on the precipice of two different realities: one in which her Ba accepts who she is, and one in which he does not. She knows which reality she fears.)

“…Ellie?” Paul says, concernedly, and she blinks back to reality, realises she’s been staring hollowly at the screen for a good amount of time. “Ellie, I’m sorry if I upset you,” he continues. “I was just- I’m sure he would be happy for you too-”

“Ba doesn’t know,” she says, voice cracking a little. “That I’m- that I-”

“That you have good taste?” Paul asks, smile a little wobbly. His voice is light, obviously trying to defuse some of the tension lining her shoulders, and she finds it working just a little, huffs a small laugh back at him.

“Chinese people are big on family,” she says, quietly. “I don’t know how he’ll take it, knowing that I won’t be bringing home a future husband, that I’ll never give him grandchildren.”

Paul raises an eyebrow. “He’s _asked_ you for grandchildren? He never really seemed the type.”

“Not actively,” she says. “But you know Ba. He’s a caretaker, at heart. Growing up, he’d sometimes talk about me bringing a young man home, to help with the station-work, or to keep me company so I wouldn’t be lonely when his time was up. I don’t think he’d ever considered that I might bring a young woman home.”

Paul is quiet for a moment.

“You remember that time, back in senior year, when Mum found my Google search history and thought I was gay?” he says, at last, and Ellie snorts.

“Yes,” she says, “and not in the least because you’ve told that story at least ten times by now.”

He flashes her an unrepentant grin, lightning-quick, and then his face falls back into a more sombre expression. “I thought she was going to kill me, for being gay,” he says, slowly. “We’re a God-fearing household, we go to Church every Sunday, and five times a year we listen to a sermon on how the Lord made Adam and Eve, and not Adam and Steve. I was so sure that she’d cast me out of the family for committing some kind of grave sin, and I was _terrified_ , even though I wasn’t actually gay.”

“Thanks,” Ellie says dryly. “This is making me feel way better already.”

“No, Ellie, _listen_ ,” he says, his voice earnest. “Here’s the most important part: _she accepted it as part of me_. Because that’s what family should do: accept you for you who are, and not who they want you to be. And your dad? Ellie, your dad is the best kind of family. I know that. And I know that you know that.”

Ellie sighs, and nods. She knows Paul isn’t lying, knows the truth in her bones like she knows the truth of Saturday night _lu rou fan_ in front of the TV, spiced and warm with love. And truth be told, there’s a small part of her that feels awful about keeping something this big, this important to her, from her Ba.

“I’ll tell him,” she says, after mulling it over in silence. “In person. I don’t think this is the kind of thing I should drop on him over Skype.”

“I’ll keep your secret,” Paul smiles. “No pressure, alright? You don’t have to tell him if you don’t want to. But I just thought you deserved to know that you _could_ tell him.”

“He’s all the family I have,” she says, softly. “I should tell him. He deserves to know.”

“Don’t tell him because you think he deserves it,” says Paul, slowly, deliberately. “Tell him because you want to.”

Ellie laughs, a little choked sound, a small sense of relief flooding over her. “When did you get so wise?”

“Oh, Ellie,” he says, and his smile is fond, even through the shitty graphics of his webcam. “I learned it all from you.”

~

It’s three weeks to finals and Ellie’s nose-deep in her American Poetry notes, yellow highlighter in one hand and ballpoint pen in the other, busily re-annotating a verse. It’s evening but the library is still about half-full, a stark difference from the quiet emptiness it would have had at around this time closer to the start of term, but finals are approaching now and most of the student population is only just remembering that they probably should start revising on lessons they haven’t paid attention to all term.

There’s warm fingers on the back of her neck and Ellie jumps, narrowly avoiding drawing a long streak of neon yellow ink across the back of her hand, as Blake slides into the empty seat next to her.

“Hey,” she says, sliding across a hot cup of green tea from the café. “You’ve been here since the library opened today – need a break?”

Ellie reaches for the cup and takes a long, fortifying sip, and only then does she realise she’s parched – she’d been too absorbed to remember to take a drink of water since at least the early afternoon.

“I’d like to finish going through these three poems, at the very least,” she says, regretfully.

Blake dimples at her, taking back the cup and sipping from it as well. “I can wait. But I’m dragging you to dinner after that, so you don’t forget to eat, alright?”

Under the table, she reaches for Ellie’s hand and gives it a gentle squeeze, and Ellie can’t help but smile back.

“Sure,” she says.

Half an hour later, Ellie’s packing up her stationery as Blake puts away a heavily dog-eared textbook bristling with post-it flags, and they head out of the library into a darkening evening, street lamps all already shining up and down the promenade. There are couples sitting close to each other on various benches and on the grass, some of them hugging or kissing each other, some of them just leaning close and speaking in hushed voices. Ellie almost starts to wonder why so many of them are out, and then belatedly remembers it’s a Saturday today.

“You know it’s close to finals when nobody’s leaving the campus even on date night Saturday,” Blake laughs, leading the way towards her dorm.

“Yeah,” says Ellie, distractedly, looking around at the various couples around. Most of them are straight couples, but she sees two guys leaning against a tree trunk watching a Youtube video together, one leaning his head on the other’s shoulder with their hands entwined; she sees two girls kissing in the shadow of one of the college buildings, half-hidden by the cover of night, and wonders.

She and Blake don't do couple-y things like that. Sure, they cuddle together in each other’s dorm rooms, and they’ve done their fair share of kissing, but nothing in public. They’ve never really discussed it, but when they’re in public they keep their hands to themselves, nothing more than a friendly shoulder-bump, a soft smile, or walking next to each other, too close to be just friends – but that’s it.

“Hey,” she says, once they’re both ensconced in Blake’s room, picking from the remains of a large bowl of microwave mac-and-cheese that they’d quickly devoured. She’s curled up into Blake’s side, now, mildly sleepy from the heavy weight of the cheese sitting in her stomach.

“Hmm?”

“Does it bother you, that we don’t hold hands or anything in public?”

Blake hums softly, and Ellie feels her drop her chin to rest softly on top of Ellie’s head.

“Not particularly,” she says. “Why?”

Ellie squirms a little. “I don’t know,” she says. “I just… well, I wondered. Isn’t it something couples do?”

“Well,” says Blake. “It’s not like it’s a pre-requisite or anything, you know. It’s not like we’re not a couple until we’ve held hands in public.”

“That’s not answering the question,” Ellie replies, frowning a little. “Does it bother you that we don’t?”

Blake’s quiet for a while, one hand idly tapping a rhythm on the side of Ellie’s arm. Then: “Ellie, you realise that if we hold hands in public, or show any other public displays of affection, then people will know you’re queer, right?”

And the thing is, she knows. She knows that it’ll be a declaration of her queer identity, opening up to the world this part of her that she’s only just started to come to understand and accept in the last few years, and she won’t deny that the thought terrifies her. But there’s still a part of her that wonders if she’s being fair to Blake by holding back, this girl who has given her heart entirely to Ellie to hold, and has not asked for anything in return.

“If it’s something you want,” she says, “If it’s something that’ll make you happy, I’d do it.”

Blake sighs, a puff of warm breath that ruffles the short baby-hairs at the top of Ellie’s head, and the arm that’s wrapped around Ellie’s shoulders squeezes a little. “I know you haven’t officially come out yet, other than to your close friends,” she says. “I’m not about to force you to come out to the entire world if you’re not ready for that.”

“Mm.”

“Ellie,” and Blake pulls away so she can look Ellie in the eyes, reaches out to squish Ellie’s cheeks in one hand. “I’ll never ask you to do anything that’s going to make you uncomfortable, alright? I’m not dating you so that I can show you off to the world. I’m dating you because you’re _you_. That’s all I need.”

“Okay,” Ellie tries to say, but it comes out garbled because of her squished cheeks. There’s a pause, and then both of them burst out snickering for a full thirty seconds before they can recompose themselves.

Once they’ve calmed down, Blake smiles and reaches out for Ellie’s left hand, threads their fingers together.

“I’m happy just with this,” she says, looking down at their joined hands. “Don’t worry about it, alright? We’re not other couples, and we don’t have to do what they do. We’ll just do things our own way.”

Ellie softens, and squeezes Blake’s hand in hers, a warm swell of affection rising in her chest. “Okay,” she says.

~

Ellie doesn’t go home immediately that summer. There’s no New York internship waiting for her ( _WSJ_ had asked if she’d like to come back, but she thinks of the little train booth and rickety little house she hasn’t seen in nearly three years, a warm smile and hot soup on the table, and declines the offer), but she calls her Ba, tells him she’s coming home only in the second month of summer break, because Blake’s invited her to spend a month with her in Iowa.

Blake’s not out to her family, and Ellie knows her sleeping bag at the foot of Blake’s bed is there _because_ the Giuliani household thinks she’s Blake’s ‘friend from school’, but that's more than enough for her. They’ve definitely finished all of _Fullmetal Alchemist_ by then (including the liveaction movie on Netflix, which Ellie firmly decides she’ll remain on the fence about), but every night they huddle together under Blake’s covers, one earbud each, and look through the catalogue of Asian shows on Netflix.

Ellie’s not one for hyperbole, but she thinks that if she is, she might well be tempted to say that it’s the best one month of her life.

Blake volunteers at an after-school centre most weekdays, giving supplementary lessons to children in the neighbourhood, helping to patch the gaps where the teachers or the textbooks haven’t managed to get through.

“I’m not going to force you to come with me,” she tells Ellie on the first day that she heads out for lessons. “I know you’re not comfortable meeting a bunch of new people at once, and some of the kids are really energetic.”

“It’s something important to you,” Ellie replies. “I’ll go with you. At least for one day, just to see what it’s like.”

And so, Ellie goes. Supplementary classes are held in an old building three streets down from Blake’s house, one session for younger children in the morning and one for older children in the afternoon. It’s unstructured chaos, and the handful of volunteers don’t really follow fixed lesson plans as much as they do answer questions on the spot. Ellie generates some modicum of excitement on the first day when she’s introduced as “Miss Blake’s best friend”, but as it turns out a good number of the children are just as shy as she is, and Ellie finds herself watching from a quiet corner as the children flock to Blake instead, watching as Blake patiently answers each question as best as she can.

It’s the afternoon session in the second week of Ellie’s Iowa summer when a young girl comes in with a well-worn copy of _To Kill a Mockingbird_. Ellie’s been slowly helping Blake with the children, and they’re slowly beginning to warm up to her, but a bulk of them still head to Blake and the other volunteers first rather than this unfamiliar stranger in their midst.

It’s therefore a surprise to her when this girl comes up to her corner, book in hand and eyes wide. “Hi, I’m Brooklyn. Miss Blake says you're really good at literature,” she says, all in a rush. “Can I talk to you about _To Kill a Mockingbird_?”

“Of course,” Ellie says, moving to sit cross-legged on the floor, and motioning for Brooklyn to sit next to her.

Three hours later, some of the other children are beginning to leave, and Blake comes over to find the two of them deep in discussion about Atticus Finch’s views on doing the correct thing, and doing the _right_ thing. Brooklyn’s young but she has interesting perspectives on the text, and Ellie doesn’t even realise they've been bent over the book together for so long until she shifts her seated position and feels how cramped her knees are.

“Hey, book nerds,” Blake says, looking down at them with an amused half-grin on her face. “They need to close the centre for the day.”

“Nooooo,” Brooklyn whines, but obligingly sticks a tattered bookmark between the pages that they’d been poring over. “Miss Ellie makes the book way more interesting than they do at school.”

“I’m here again tomorrow,” Ellie finds herself saying. “We can continue that discussion, if you’re interested.”

Brooklyn lights up at that. “Okay!” She bounces to her feet, and looks down at Ellie. “It’s a promise!”

Blake watches Brooklyn’s retreating back and laughs softly. “I see you’re getting good with them,” she says.

“Nah,” Ellie says, stretching out her cramped calves. “Definitely not as good as you. But it was fun, you know? I think I learned something from her today, as well. I can see why you like it.”

“Hm?”

“Teaching,” Ellie clarifies. “It’s more than clear to me that you’re in your element here, teaching others, but I think I only truly understood today, why you like it so much.”

Blake smiles a fond little smile at her. “Gosh,” she says, softly. “I love you, you nerd.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im so sorry it's been a while ;____; work has gotten REALLY crazy recently and i have literally not been able to write anything new since my last chapter update. but i still had a bunch of pre-written scenes, so that's what i've put into this new update!! i've now published pretty much all my pre-written stuff, though, so the next update'll need to wait until i've written enough. i'll do my best to get a new chapter out soon, but sometimes work.... gets in the way.... *shakes fist*
> 
> food footnotes (foodnotes??): [paneer makhani](https://www.indianhealthyrecipes.com/paneer-makhani-paneer-makhanwala-recipe/), [rajma](https://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/rajma-masala-recipe-restaurant-style/) and [chana dal](https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1014366-chana-dal-new-delhi-style) are all different vegetarian indian curries. they are DELICIOUS - 10/10 would recommend, especially paneer makhani which i love with my whole dang heart
> 
> not sure if i clarified in previous chapters, but _lu rou fan_ is the chinese name for braised pork on rice, which the Chu household canonically cooks frequently.
> 
> thank you so much for the kind comments on every chapter! i treasure each one i receive, and they really help to get me through shitty days when the email alerts come in ;o;


	5. Chapter 5

Blake sees her off at the station for her train back to Squahamish when her month in Iowa is up. “I’ll miss you,” Blake whispers into her ear as they hug, just a few seconds too long to be a hug between friends, but nobody’s watching on the crowded platform.

“I’ll text you,” Ellie whispers back. She’s got two stolen cardigans and a stolen high school hoodie from Blake’s closet stuffed into her bag and she knows she’s going to wear them to sleep most nights, but it’s still hard to leave part of her heart here on the platform, when they’ve spent the last month together pretty much 24 hours a day.

She’d told Blake about her plan to come out to her Ba, two nights ago when she’d started to pack up her suitcase; told her how she was both looking forward to and dreading going home before it. “If it doesn’t go well,” Blake had said, taking both of Ellie’s hands in hers, “I’ll beat him up for you. Girl scout’s honour.”

“Please don’t beat him up,” she’d said in reply, voice choked. “He’s a good guy, and he’s also very frail.”

“Alright,” Blake had said, “but I’ll give him a dozen calls a day if he doesn’t love and accept you like you deserve, alright? You’re being so, _so_ brave, and I’m so proud of you.”

An announcement plays over the system now, notifying passengers that the train will depart soon, and Ellie pulls away from Blake’s warm embrace.

“I’ll see you next fall,” she says, and Blake smiles, a little quirk of her lips.

“I’ll Skype you this weekend,” she says. “Now go, silly, before your train leaves without you.”

And so, Ellie goes. She picks a window seat with a view of the platform, watches Blake as she waves and waves and waves until the station is no longer in view. It’s a long train ride, and she remembers taking this journey once before, with a large suitcase full of dreams, on her first ever trip out of Squahamish. It seems a lot shorter, now, most of the journey passing by while she drifts in and out of sleep, or immerses herself in the pages of a novel she’d picked up the week before.

Eventually, the train pulls into a painfully familiar platform, a familiar little booth on one side and an even more familiar house on the other, paint slowly peeling off its walls. The view of her childhood home from the train window is at once both familiar and strange, like viewing a memory through a sepia-toned lens, a snapshot of warm memories of the past, and she suddenly feels the need to scramble off the train, breathe the familiar air, hear the familiar _crunch_ of the gravel below her sneakers.

She is the only one who gets off at Squahamish station, and there is nobody else with whom she could be mistaken for; and yet, the first thing she notices once she gets her luggage down from the carriage is a tall man with an undercut and a faded varsity jacket, holding a large piece of cardboard with the words _Ellie Chu_ written on them in bold red marker ink.

“There she is!” Paul yells when he catches sight of her, and the next thing she knows he’s bounded over and swept her into a warm bear hug. She breathes in his familiar smell, spices and cooking-oil and _home_ , and pats his back as best as she can with an ex-football player pinning her arms to her sides.

“I’m home,” she says, slowly, deliberately, and means it.

“Did you like the sign?” he asks, pulling back and grinning at her. He’s holding it loosely in his hand now, and she can faintly make out the word _Munsky_ on the other side of it, likely part of the printing on the box the sign was recycled from.

“There is literally no way you would have been unable to find me,” she says dryly, and he beams at her. “Nobody got off the train except for me, and I’m the only Asian person besides my dad who would be getting off at Squahamish.”

“But it’s my first time seeing my best friend in three years! What if she’s gotten so cool that I don’t recognise her any more?”

“Please,” she says, rolling her eyes as he reaches across to swipe her suitcase from her before she can so much as protest. “We just Skyped like, last week, Munsky.”

“Yeah,” he says, turning back to look at her, smile warm and fond. “But it’s different, having you physically here.”

Ellie grins right back at him, and she realises that she’s missed this, even through all the wonderful experiences she’s had in Grinnell: the warm, easy acceptance of a person who’s seen her at her most vulnerable, who she’s seen at his lowest, and who she trusts implicitly. _Maybe_ , she thinks to herself, _this is what having a brother is like_.

“Now,” Paul says, turning back. “Come on, let’s go. Mr Chu’s making all your favourites tonight, and they’re all _my_ favourites too, so I really want to go back and eat right now.”

Paul marches up the ten steps it takes to get from the train tracks to the front door of her house, and throws the door open, dragging her suitcase inside. Ellie follows suit, more sedately, hears Paul call out and an answering voice come from the kitchen.

All at once, as Ellie steps into the foyer, she’s hit with the warm, spiced scent of the minced-meat gravy for _lu rou fan_ simmering on the stove, the clean smell of rice cooking in the rice cooker, and an overwhelming sensation of _home_. She barely notices as the slight form of her Ba, shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows and hands slightly wet from a quick wash in the kitchen sink, comes out of the kitchen.

“Ellie,” he says, his voice breaking the careful silence. And then, in Mandarin: “You’re home.”

It’s not like she hasn’t seen him in three years, of course; there’s the regular Skype sessions with Paul playing tech assistant, but looking at his face on the grainy screen is nothing compared to seeing him standing before her. Paul, she thinks, might have been right – it _is_ different, being physically back.

“Ba,” she says, and her voice cracks a little. She drops her backpack on the ground, kicks off her shoes, and shuffles forward to hug him. She feels like she’s five years old again, warm and sleepy in her Ba’s arms after watching a movie; fourteen years old again, eating leftovers on the couch while her father sleeps beside her; eighteen years old again, making dumplings side-by-side with her father in the kitchen.

“I’m back,” she says, again, pretending her voice isn’t choked with emotion. “I’m home.”

~

“So,” says Paul. They’re sitting in front of the TV in the Chus’ living room, with a massive basin of washed beansprouts in front of them, methodically snapping the little root off each sprout and throwing it into another bowl on the coffee table. Fried noodles are on the menu tonight, and Ellie had volunteered to prep the beansprouts (mostly out of nostalgia for the job she had once despised) while Ba went out to the supermarket to get condiments.

A commercial’s playing on the screen, but they’ve long turned the volume down to mute in favour of talking to each other. “So,” Ellie echoes. She pulls out three beansprouts and snaps off all their roots at once.

There’s a pause, broken only by the soft wet sound of beansprouts snapping between their fingers.

“How has everything been, back here?” Ellie asks, eventually.

“Pretty much the same,” Paul shrugs. “Most days, I think there must be some unspoken natural law of Squahamish, that if more than one thing changes within the span of a week, the fabric of reality will bend and warp itself into oblivion.” He says this with a straight face, and there’s something so incongruous about his deliberate lack of inflection with the utter ridiculousness of his statement that Ellie can’t help but snicker into her sleeve for a moment.

“Business as usual for you as well?”

“Well,” Paul says, “I’ve been doing more mail-order stuff recently, for some food stalls that want to sell my sausages. It’s driving Mum nuts, because I’m spending more time working on my own stuff rather than helping out with the shop. But I think I’ve managed to talk her around, at least a little.”

Ellie knows vaguely about the mail-order plan, having been a passive part of the group Zoom calls between Paul, Priya and herself discussing the marketing plan behind it. It had been three separate calls and a long, frantic email chain (that Ellie had half-ignored once it went into discussions of design and social media engagement), but the power of procrastination of her actual college tutorials had meant that Priya had nearly singlehandedly hammered out a marketing plan for Munsky’s Sausages in the better part of a week.

“It’s good,” she says, now. “That your mum’s okay with it.”

“Well,” Paul says, with a small crooked smile. “It took us a while to get there.”

“Hmm,” Ellie hums, and throws another fistful of beansprouts into the bowl. “How has the rest of Squahamish been?”

Paul badly stifles a snort, and sways his knee gently to the side to knock against her own. “Since when did you care about the rest of this dinky town?” he asks, teasingly. “I bet you don’t know more than five people in it.”

“I know your mum,” Ellie says, indignantly. “ _And_ at least two of your siblings. And Mrs Geselchap. And-” She cuts off, noting Paul’s small smile curling into a wider grin.

“What?”

“Nothin’,” he says nonchalantly, reaching over to pluck some more beansprouts out of the never-ending basin, snapping their roots off. “Go on. That’s still only four people, not counting me and your dad.”

“…And Aster,” she says. “That makes five.”

“Mm,” says Paul, still grinning. “Well, I don’t think you’re _that_ interested to know about my siblings and you’ve asked after my mum already, and I don’t think you’re itching to ask about Mrs G since you’ve been making plans to meet her for coffee. So if you’re using this to fish about information about Aster you might as well ask outright.”

Ellie rolls her eyes and flicks a piece of beansprout root at Paul – it lands in the soft curls of his hair and stays there, like a stray leaf. It’s true, she _had_ been trying to fish for information about Aster without coming across as being too obvious, but apparently Paul knows her better than she thinks. “Fine. Don’t make it weird, Munsky. How is Aster doing? I haven’t spoken to her in a while.”

Paul is silent for a while, the only sound the soft burble of the TV and the snapping of beansprout roots. “She came back, earlier this summer,” he says. “She’s gone up to Sacramento now, though. Something about a church retreat? Not sure what kind of church retreat takes more than one month, though.”

“How’s she doing in art school?”

Paul shrugs. “I didn’t really talk to her that much,” he says. “Her dad keeps her busy helping out in church and stuff. But I did run into her once, after service. She said she loves being in art school, and can’t wait to go back.”

“Hmm,” says Ellie. “That’s good, I’m glad. I know she was still trying to figure things out when she applied for art school. It’s good to know it’s working out for her.”

“…Do you wish things had turned out differently?” Paul asks eventually, after another long comfortable pause.

Ellie raises an eyebrow as she reaches into the basin, her fingers finally brushing the bottom for the first time – the end of the beansprouts is in sight. “Do I wish _what_ had turned out differently?”

“You know,” Paul says. “With Aster. If you’d kissed her sooner. If you hadn’t been pretending to be me when you had those deep, late night conversations.”

And- well. She’d be lying if she said she’d never thought about it, wondered about the could-have-beens in the quiet of a late night. But those were the thoughts of freshman Ellie, lonely in a strange place and clinging to the slightest shred of familiarity; she hasn’t thought about Aster like _that_ in many months. “I don’t know,” she says, honestly. “Maybe if things had turned out differently, I wouldn’t have gone to Grinnell. Maybe I wouldn’t have become who I am today, maybe I could have been someone different. But there’s no use dwelling on it, you know? I don’t think either of us would have wanted to give up on our dream schools just to make _whatever_ we had work out, when we didn't even know what we had. And we wouldn’t have wanted the other to give up _their_ dream school, either.”

“Bad timing, I guess,” Paul agrees, throwing another fistful of rootless beansprouts into the bowl.

“Besides,” Ellie continues, a little drily, “I have a girlfriend now, one I’m happy with. So no, I haven’t really been thinking of a potential relationship I could have been in with another girl.”

Paul is silent for a while. “Well,” he says at last, scooping up the last of the beansprouts. “I guess that’s a fair point.”

~

It’s a Friday night, nearly a month into her return to Squahamish, when she finally works up enough courage. Paul’s eating dinner at home today (“The boy has an actual family, you know,” her Ba had said dryly in Mandarin when she caught herself pulling out three sets of chopsticks from the drawer for dinner) so it’s just her and Ba, curled up in the two squishy armchairs in front of the television.

The house smells like the chicken soup Ba had made in deference to the rainy weather that’d persisted all day, bringing a slight damp chill to the air rather at odds with the warmth of the summer season. He’d bought a whole chicken and let it cook in his soup pot for pretty much the whole day, and when Ellie’d come in in the evening from helping the Munskys unload their latest meat delivery she’d been hit right in the face with the warm, comforting smell of ginseng chicken soup.

An old movie’s playing on the television, the one she remembers watching a number of years ago with the woman running along the platform after a train, watching her lover pull away from the station as she keeps running and running. Back then, she’d thought it was a little stupid – even Usain Bolt wouldn’t be able to keep pace with a train, let alone a woman in dress and heels. But now, she imagines herself on the platform and Blake on the train, perhaps on her way to begin some long-term journey that’ll take her far away for an extended period of time, and wonders if she might just run after the train as well, watching it until she can’t see it any more.

“Ssh,” Ba says as she gets up to wash her bowl. He motions gently to the screen. “Best part.”

She clutches her empty bowl, sits back down, and watches as the scene fades and the credits begin to roll. “You’ve seen this movie multiple times, Ba,” she says. “You don’t need to hold your breath for that scene every time.”

“It is a good scene," he says. “Shows the power of love.”

Ellie hums noncommittally, and reaches over to pluck the unwashed soup bowl from his hands. “I guess so,” she says.

His gaze drifts back to the screen, but his attention’s not focused on it now, and the silence grows, broken only by the soft chatter of the television. Ellie thinks about chasing after someone you love as they pull away on the train, laughing and crying and breathless. She thinks about the words curled into a lump in the back of her throat, that have been wedged there for the better part of two months now, aching to be spoken yet always firmly swallowed down for the fear of the reaction. She thinks about a cat in a box with a radioactive particle, waiting. She thinks about the warm crackle of bad-wifi static, an understanding smile, Paul’s voice, tinny over the speakers: “ _he’s the best kind of family_ ”.

“Ba,” she says, and winces as her voice cracks.

He turns his head to face her, eyebrow raised. “Hm?”

“I-” She stops, licks her lips, tries to swallow to moisten her suddenly-dry throat. “I met someone. In college.”

There’s a pause, and when he replies, it’s in Mandarin: “Oh, a classmate of yours?”

“…No,” she replies in the same language. “Someone from a different major.”

And, well, okay. Maybe she’s a little bit of a coward, taking the easy way out and not clarifying to her Ba. Or maybe it’s easier to hide behind the soft, smooth tones of Mandarin. Easier to hide behind the fact that in Mandarin, the third-person singular pronoun sounds the same when spoken aloud, whether it refers to a man or a woman. So she clings to it, the last corner of the security blanket just before it slides off her shoulders, revealing the truth below.

“Mm,” Ba says. “Have the two of you been together long?”

“Not very,” says Ellie, and pretends to ignore the little lump of guilt burning like something acidic at the back of her throat. “Maybe about half a year or so. It’s still kind of new.”

“And do they make you happy?”

Ellie thinks, unbidden, of cool nights huddled together in front of a laptop screen, stolen sweaters and cardigans squirrelled away in her closet, kind eyes and warm kisses on her forehead. “Yes,” she says, and almost doesn’t realise that a little soft smile has made its way onto her face. “They make me happy.”

“That’s good,” he says, and nods decisively. “Do they know how to make dumplings?”

Ellie blinks. “Uh,” she says. She thinks about the _gnocchi alla sorrentina_ she and Blake had made one afternoon, rolling out what felt like millions of tiny potato dumplings and dumping them straight into boiling, slightly salted water. “Not the kind we make, but something similar.”

“Good, good,” he hums. “Bring them home one day, and I will teach them.”

And there’s easy acceptance in his tone, just like that, and Ellie swallows. “That’s it?” she asks. “You’re not going to ask about who they are, or what they’re like?”

Ba shrugs, looking entirely unconcerned, but his eyes are warm as they gaze at her. “They make you happy, yes?”

“Yes, they do.”

“Then that is enough for me,” he says. “If this person can make my daughter happy, then who am I to judge them further?”

Ellie bites her lip, hard, and she can feel the choking feeling of the lingering guilt, the one truth she hasn’t said, welling up in her throat and causing her eyes to prickle with the promise of tears. She’s grateful that Ba’s accepted this new development in her life this easily, but she also knows he’s most likely under the impression that she’s got a new boyfriend, and part of her wonders if he’ll still react this way if she disabuses him of that notion.

She’s at the precipice of a cliff, looking down at the drop below with wings attached to her arms, wondering if she’ll hit the rocks below if she jumps. But she’s no Icarus.

“Ba,” she says. She takes a deep breath, and she takes a running leap. “Ba, I have a girlfriend. I’m dating a girl.”

He cocks his head at her, and she can almost see him processing the information as he goes quiet for a while. “Okay,” he says at last. “Bring your girlfriend home one day. I will teach her how to make dumplings. Our family recipe.”

“You’re not… mad?”

“Why would I be?” he asks, and she can see genuine confusion in his eyes. “I trust your judgment, Ellie. If they make you happy, then they must be a good person, and that is enough for me.”

“Oh,” she says, and there’s nothing else she can say to that, nothing else she can say in the face of that easy acceptance. ( _Best kind of family,_ indeed.) Ba gets up from his seat, pads over to where she’s sitting frozen with a soup bowl in her hands, and puts his arm gently around her shoulders.

“You worry too much, Ellie,” he says quietly, and she slumps into his familiar warmth. “It will be fine.”

~

It’s the last week before she’s due to return to Grinnell for the start of her senior year. She’s been to see Mrs Geselchap around five times by this point, but every time her old teacher’s been bogged down marking summer school homework, so their coffee chats have all been reduced to Ellie quietly reading a book or helping Mrs Geselchap pick out spelling and grammar errors in students’ essays, while their takeaway cups of coffee sit cooling on the table.

Today’s no different, Mrs Geselchap’s red pen swiftly slashing its way through a dwindling stack of essays like the swift flick of a fencer’s foil, and Ellie quietly flipping through the lesson plans Mrs Geselchap has made for the upcoming term.

“ _Animal Farm_ again?” she asks, tapping her pencil on the second page of the lesson plan, and Mrs Geselchap snorts.

“Easier that way,” she says. “We don’t get nearly enough government funding to change up the assigned literature books frequently, you know. At least this way I can re-use the same copies every year, save some money.”

“Hm,” Ellie says thoughtfully. “Little bit of a pity.” She thinks of an afternoon’s discussion with a young middle-school-aged girl, animated eyes and waving hands, discussing themes that bear relevance even to every day life, and wonders if the young children of Squahamish deserve to have their horizons widened a little, even if it’s only through a class that almost none of them pay attention to.

“ _To Kill A Mockingbird_ would be good, if you ever want to consider changing it up,” she says. “Or maybe _The Colour Purple_. Not that _Animal Farm_ was bad or anything, just- I think most people were too distracted by talking animals to consider the historical parallels.”

Mrs Geselchap laughs dryly, placing another essay on the ‘finished’ stack. “You think too highly of them,” she says. “It’s hard to beat an appreciation for good literature into children who’d much rather be looking at their social media accounts during class, so the talking animals at least keep their attention some of the time.”

“Hm,” Ellie says. “I guess.”

“If you wanted to teach interested students,” Mrs Geselchap continues, “your best bet is to go teach in college, where the students _choose_ your degree. Most of the time, at least.”

They sit in silence for another half an hour before Mrs Geselchap finishes marking the last paper and caps her red pen, leaning back in her chair to stretch and sigh in relief. “So,” she says, reaching for her cold coffee and looking across the rim of the cup at Ellie. “One more year left in Grinnell, hm?”

“Yeah,” says Ellie. She’s already regaled Mrs Geselchap with tales of her past three years in college on previous visits, but Mrs Geselchap looks like she’s got more questions to ask, so Ellie patiently waits.

“And what do you plan to do after?”

When Ellie blinks in surprise and doesn’t answer, Mrs Geselchap snorts and leans forward. “If you don’t want to be stuck in a school like this teaching books about talking animals to children who aren’t interested in listening, you might need to start considering what else you can do with that English degree of yours to get out of that career path, you know?”

Dimly, Ellie remembers four years ago, Mrs Geselchap pushing across a Grinnell application form to her after class, telling her: _Grinnell was the best years of my life_ , and wonders.

“Did you ever?” she asks, instead of answering. “Consider what you were going to do after Grinnell?”

“Not soon enough,” says Mrs Geselchap, and her smile is rueful. “I made up all sorts of excuses to put it off – I wasn’t sure yet, I wanted to finish my degree first, I didn't want to take up additional student loans – and before I knew it I’d been back here for a couple of years, teaching in this school. So that’s my advice to you, Ellie: plan early, before you regret. You have immense potential, and you shouldn’t waste it.”

“But I don’t know yet, what I want to do after college. I’m enjoying learning in college so much, sometimes I feel like I don’t want to have to leave.”

“Hm,” Mrs Geselchap says. She reaches over to the second drawer at her desk and rifles through a stack of papers, eventually pulling out what appears to be a crumpled brochure, and Ellie stares. She distinctly remembers Mrs Geselchap pulling out the Grinnell application form from that very drawer, and wonders if it’s some kind of dimensional subpocket which provides her teacher with the exact college information the student seeking her advice requires.

It’s a brochure for Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and it’s open to the page detailing the PhD programme in English and Comparative Literature. Ellie finds her throat suddenly dry and she swallows, mind swirling as she stares at the simple course outline set out on the page. Her mind’s racing, thinking about further research and analysis into literature, the very things she enjoys in college now; thinking about the requirement for doctorate students to teach undergraduate classes. She remembers the excitement of watching one student discover the depth of themes in a written work, the joy of bouncing ideas back and forth with a contemporary, and considers.

Mrs Geselchap’s watching the play of emotions across her face, and smiles. “You’re tempted, aren’t you.”

“PhDs are expensive,” sighs Ellie, but it’s a half-hearted protest at best. She’s already in Grinnell on scholarship, and it’s not impossible to imagine that a similar scholarship may be available in Columbia. _Admissions open in September_ , reads the very last line of the brochure, and she runs her fingers along the inked line once, twice, trying to calm the excitement welling up inside her.

“I’ll think about it,” she says slowly, fixing the image of the Columbia school crest in her mind. “I’ll think about it.”

She pockets the brochure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaah wow work has been Wild, i only just managed to write enough to get this latest chapter out ;o; updates are probably going to not be as fast as they were before now that i'm out of pre-written scenes, but i've still got a bunch of ideas for this fic that i'm burning to put down into words for you guys to see real soon!
> 
> basically this whole chapter is junior year summer break, loool |D i swear it wasn't supposed to have this many scenes, but everybody wanted to talk to ellie in squahamish so uh, here we are.
> 
> ==
> 
> some notes:
> 
> peeling beansprouts? the Real Boring Chore. i mean you could always buy them with the roots pre-snapped off, but my chinese grandma would have conniptions if we didn't buy them fresh and peel them ourselves. but it takes so many of them to make a decent bowl of fried noodles so it takes forever to peel 'em sometimes.
> 
> [chinese ginseng chicken soup](https://yangsnourishingkitchen.com/ginseng-chicken-soup/) \- a legit thing, and very comforting on a rainy day. ideally it'd be made with black chicken, but i'm doubtful if the asian supermarket in squahamish would have any.
> 
> [gnocchi alla sorrentina](https://www.greatitalianchefs.com/recipes/gnocchi-alla-sorrentina-recipe) is gnocchi (a type of pasta made with potatoes and flour) in a tomato-based sauce.
> 
> in mandarin, he (他) and she (她) are both pronounced as tā, and there's no way to tell them apart in spoken mandarin except with context clues. i've tried to reflect this ambiguity in the conversation between ellie and her ba by using the singular "they" up until ellie clarifies the gender of her significant other.
> 
> columbia university does indeed have an [english and comparative literature](https://gsas.columbia.edu/degree-programs/phd-programs/english-and-comparative-literature) post-graduate programme, where a student can get an MA and then a PhD in 6 years.
> 
> ==
> 
> thank you so, so much to all you kind souls who left comments last chapter, it really made my day to read each and every one :')


End file.
